Losing streaks are normal, not a sign you are broken
A strategy that wins 55% of the time still loses five, six, seven in a row on a regular basis — not because it stopped working, but because that is what randomness looks like over a long enough sample. The math guarantees these stretches. The mistake is reading a perfectly normal streak as proof that your edge has vanished, and then acting on that false signal.
Why a drawdown feels worse than it is
Two biases do most of the damage. Loss aversion makes a loss hurt about twice as much as an equivalent win feels good, so a flat stretch feels like a crisis. And recency bias makes the last few results loom far larger than the hundreds that came before. Together they push you toward exactly the wrong move: abandoning a sound plan at its low point.
The behaviours that turn a dip into a disaster
Chasing — raising stakes to win it back fast — is the classic. So is tinkering, quietly rewriting your rules mid-drawdown to feel in control. And so is the opposite, freezing and skipping good opportunities out of fear. Each one trades a temporary, expected discomfort for a permanent, unnecessary loss of capital or edge.
Build the rules before you need them
The time to decide how you will behave in a drawdown is before you are in one. Pre-commit to your stake sizing, set a maximum drawdown that triggers a pause rather than a panic, and keep a record that lets you check whether your process is still sound. When the streak comes — and it will — you follow the plan you wrote on a calm day instead of the impulse you feel on a bad one.