To those who cannot cut losses
“Cannot Cut Losses”
It’s a word you often hear in the world of investing.
If you read a book, it says, “Cutting losses is a lifeline.”
At seminars you’re told, “Follow the rules.”
Yet when you sit in front of the chart, your fingers stay fixed a few centimeters away from the cut-loss button.
You understand it in your head, but your body won’t move.
This paradox is the wall many beginners hit first.
I wasn’t an exception either.
Every time the unrealized loss grew, I told myself, “It’ll come back with just a little more time,” and quietly raised the cut-loss line, only to realize the curve of my account was bending downward.
I spent many such nights.
Cutting losses is not a matter of knowledge,it is a matter ofEmotion and mechanismand I truly realized this after that experience.
(This article does not guarantee any profits)
Beginners’ fear of cutting losses… what is it afraid of
Blaming the fear on “weak will” is premature.
Fear has a clear structure.
Three layers of Fear
Cognitive layer: The brain learns Cut Losses = Loss (even though it’s actually “a ticket to the next move”)
Emotional layer: The pain of realized loss weighs heavier than the joy of an equivalent unrealized gain (loss aversion in behavioral economics)
Social layer: The atmosphere of not being able to say “lost,” only showing winning trades on social media
Beginners carry these three layers alone while looking at the chart.
That’s why their feet get nailed to the area above the cut-loss line.
Unrealized gains flow away like sand in an hourglass, unrealized losses remain heavy like concrete
This sensation reproduces the resistance to cutting losses.
What makes it more troublesome is that if you miss cutting losses once, a negative chain reacts to every subsequent decision.
Averaging with an unexpected lot size, sacrificing focus on your primary job, conversations with family shrinking.
Fear doesn’t end in the chart; it侵食s the contours of life.
Therefore, “Cannot Cut Losses” should be reinterpreted not as a lack of skill, but as an inadequate design for life defense.
‘Prosperitas Nexus 30 / 30 Strategy Module Equipped EA’
If you embrace profits, you should also embrace losses
To bring consistency to trading,you must measure profits and losses with the same yardstick.
Taking profits feels like “winning,” cutting losses feels like “losing.”
This asymmetry quietly gnaws at your account.
In the professional world, taking profits and cutting losses arethe twin exits.
If you declare one side as “correct” only, the expected value crumbles.
For example, if a single profit is +20,000 yen, the rule might also include a cut loss of −10,000 yen as part of the same design.
The moment you separate “+20k is skill” from “−10k is misfortune,” the validation ends.
People who accept profits mustbe prepared to accept losses generated by the same rules.
That is not giving up, but a symmetry to continue the next 100 trades.
What many misinterpret here is that “accepting losses” does not mean tolerating huge losses.
What should be accepted is not the losses themselves, but the repetitive, pre-decided small cuts.
Not the patience to bear large unrealized losses, but the accumulation of small realized losses to prevent big accidents
This shift in thinking lowers the volume of fear of cutting losses.
If you can design with discretion… is automation with EA possible?
“Automation is for people who find it difficult”… this is half right and half wrong.
Even in discretionary trading, many people unconsciously haveentry conditions and exit conditions.
“Enter this way,” “exit at a certain pips,” “only during Tokyo hours”
The design exists even if it’s not verbalized.
This is important.
Rules that humans can reproduce can, as a rule, be ported into code.
EA (Expert Advisor – automated trading program) runs on MetaTrader 4/5
and mechanically executes the following elements.
Entry conditions（e.g., moving average crossover, time filter）
Exit conditions（take profit, stop loss, trailing stop）
Money management（lot size, maximum concurrent positions, risk％）
Stop rules（wait before major news, down-lot after a losing streak）
If your discretionary design can be reproduced as a routine, it isa material for automation. Conversely, trades based on momentary vibes with different reasons each time are not reproducible before EAization.
If you want to automate losses, first try to state the condition for cutting losses in one sentence within your discretion.This is the first step.
Concrete example:
“Sell USD/JPY on the 1-hour chart when the short-term moving average crosses below the long-term moving average, cut loss at 30 pips from entry, take profit at 20 pips, only during Tokyo time.”
This is a level of granularity you can convert into MQL5 code.
In the 2020s, describing logic in natural language and having AI draft it has become common, butwho wrote it is less important than whether it won’t break.
Bugs that refer to future candles, order duplication, over-optimization
Humans still bear responsibility to verify these.
Still, “hybrid operation” where you entrust only the execution of cuts to EA is a realistic intermediate point for many individual traders.
‘Prosperitas Nexus 30 / 30 Strategy Module Equipped EA’
“Win rate = net profit” is not the whole story… the trap of numbers
The skeleton of expectancy can be organized with the following formula.
Expected value = (win rate × average profit) − (loss rate × average loss)
Even with 80% win rate, if a single loss is five times the profit, the account will shrink.
Conversely, with a 40% win rate, if losses are kept small and gains large, you can trend toward profit in the long run.
In FX practice articles and verification communities,high win rate does not equal high profitability,
and this understanding is repeatedly shared
People who fear cutting losses tend to bear small losses to protect win rate, and occasionally large losses wipe it out.
What to look at is not win rate butexpected value per trade and maximum drawdown.
For example, if you make 20 trades a month and win rate is 65% but average loss is twice the average profit, the apparent win rate is a bookkeeping illusion.
Conversely, with a 45% win rate but fixed 10-pip loss and 30-pip profit, after subtracting spread and costs, there can be a positive expected value.
The value of automating cut losses is exactly here.
Every time a person delays cutting losses for the sake of “this time only,” the expected value becomes distorted, while the EA continues to execute under the same rules
This difference quietly appears in your account balance after about six months.
‘Prosperitas Nexus 30 / 30 Strategy Module Equipped EA’
Five traps of the mind that people who cannot cut losses fall into
Cut loss avoidance is less about personality and more aboutrepeating cognitive patterns.
Five traps
The illusion of averaging：“If you average your position, you’ll come back” — accounts don’t move by averages, they move by your balance
Rush to recover: next entry becomes larger, making cut losses even later
Desire for the proof of correctness: cutting losses is a confirmation that “I was wrong,” which wounds self-esteem
Silent competition: not wanting to show defeat to others, you smile with unrealized losses
Flexibility of rules: “this time only is an exception” and you rewrite the cut loss line every time
The common point of this mindset isconnecting cutting losses to “a failure of character” rather than a failure of judgment.
That’s why you halt your hands.
The remedy is not willpower, butto decide losses in advance and remove execution from human hands.
‘Prosperitas Nexus 30 / 30 Strategy Module Equipped EA’
Leave mechanical cutting losses to the “real machine”
Even if you say you cut losses mechanically, if a human finger executes it,
half of it is still discretionary.
To truly make it mechanical,you must move the execution of cut losses to software.
Key design points when entrusting EA with cutting losses are as follows.
Fix the cut-loss width before entry(embed in code in pips or %)
Do not push the cut loss away with averaging(do not put additional conditions in a separate rule)
Automatic lot down after a losing streak(prevent revenge trading structurally)
Stop EA when monthly maximum loss is reached(the final shield to protect your account and life)
Keep a log and review by records, not by emotions
Test historically in MetaTrader Strategy Tester, start from demo, then small-lot live, in that order
skipping this sequence makes automation an extension of “cannot cut losses.” EA is not a crystal ball.
If you automate bad rules,loss cutting will be mechanical and fast
which is a scary reality as well.
That’s why there is value in carefully designing the loss-cutting itself.
In terms of operation, you must also set up VPS or a continuously running PC, choose a trustworthy broker, and use filters for spread widening, etc.,the environment where losses are executedmust be prepared as well.
If you do it yourself, you can adjust cut-loss width, time frame, news stop, and loss-down in line with your life rhythm
This is the biggest advantage of entrusting cut losses to a “real machine.”
‘Prosperitas Nexus 30 / 30 Strategy Module Equipped EA’
[This Time’s Summary]
Loss cutting is not about willpower but design and delegation
Behind the phrase “cannot cut losses” lies a fear structure that cannot be explained by willpower alone.
If you can take pleasure in profits, you need an symmetry to also accept losses generated by the same rules.
If you can design entries and exits discretionarily, you can reproduce that with EA
and remove the execution of cut losses from human hands.
Don’t just rely on win rate for reassurance.
Net profit is determined by expected value and drawdown.
Name the traps of the cannot-cut-loss mindset, and instead of powering through with will,increase the portion delegated to machines
That is the conclusion I arrived at after nights of large unrealized losses.
The next step is to write in one sentence before opening today's chart, how many pips the cut loss is, and put that into code or EA parameters.
It doesn’t have to be fully automatic at first.
Discretionary entry and EA-only decision on exits
From such a small delegation, the fear of cutting losses will surely shrink.
Loss cutting is not a loss,it is a design to continue the next 100 times.
‘Prosperitas Nexus 30 / 30 Strategy Module Equipped EA’