Trading Psychology: How To Spot Tilt Before It Costs You

Tilt is the trader's word for emotionally compromised decision-making. It is responsible for a staggering share of account damage — and it is almost always preventable.

The problem is timing. Tilt is obvious in hindsight and invisible in the moment. Building early-warning signals is the whole skill.

The three early signals

First: position size creep. You start risking slightly more without a reason. Second: timeframe shrink. You drop to lower timeframes chasing 'quick' trades. Third: rule narration — you start explaining why this trade is the exception.

Any one of these is a yellow flag. Two together means step away from the screen.

Make it visible

You cannot manage what you cannot see. Tagging the emotion behind every trade turns a vague feeling into data. After 50 trades, the pattern is undeniable: your revenge trades have a measurable, negative expectancy.

MKSTVEFX flags clusters of negative-emotion trades and falling discipline scores — so tilt gets caught on trade two, not trade twelve.