Trading Tilt
Risk ManagementA sustained state of frustrated, emotional trading after a loss or bad fill, in which plan rules quietly stop being followed.
Tilt is a term borrowed from poker for a state of frustrated, emotionally driven decision-making that follows a bad beat — a position stopped out just before price moved the expected way, a slipped fill, or a setup missed by seconds. On tilt a trader keeps acting but stops following the plan: size drifts upward, stops are widened or removed, and unrelated instruments get traded. Unlike a single impulsive trade, tilt is a sustained state, which is why it can turn one loss into a session-long sequence of them. The usual defenses are structural rather than motivational: a daily loss limit, a cap on the number of trades, or a rule to stop for a fixed period once a defined trigger occurs.