Tom Hougaard

“Everything that feels natural in a losing trade is the thing that will kill the account.”

Hougaard's whole thesis: the instincts that serve you everywhere else — hope, patience, giving it another chance — are precisely inverted in this one domain.

“Assume you are wrong the moment you enter. Then a losing trade is confirmation, not an insult.”

He argues the top few per cent hold their positions loosely on purpose, because a trader defending a prediction cannot exit cleanly.

“Tight loss, wide win. The whole business is that one sentence.”

Most losing traders are right more often than they are wrong — and still lose, because the losses are permitted to be larger than the wins.

“The trade that comes back is the most expensive one you will ever take.”

Being rescued after refusing to cut is what installs the habit; the account is destroyed months later by the same behaviour on a day it doesn't come back.

“You are not trading the market. You are trading your own reaction to it.”

Charts are public and largely commoditised; what is not shared is what happens in your body when the position goes red.

“Keep a book of truths, not a scoreboard.”

Hougaard's journal records what he felt and what he told himself, because the P&L already records the outcome and explains nothing.

“Rehearse the trade before the open, so the decision is already made when the money is live.”

Mental rehearsal is his substitute for willpower — a decision taken in advance costs far less than one taken mid-drawdown.

“Revenge trading is not a strategy failure. It is an ego that has taken control of the mouse.”

The urge to make it back today is the single most reliable predictor of a very bad week.