Brokeback Mountain - Brokeback Stops

I can't resist quoting from this movie - I have to admit that I haven't seen it (yet) - and not 100% sure if it's my type of movie so I'm not going to rush out to see it just yet.

I've heard and seen this quote from the movie a number of times now:
God, I wish I knew how to quit you!

There's a good take-off with the Apple Mac that I'm sure you've already seen as well.

But what has this got to do with trading?

Well the God, I wish I knew how to quit you! quote reminds me of some of the trading positions I've held. I go into these positions with 110% conviction that they're going to work out and when it goes against me I look at it wish disbelief and struggle to pull the stop trigger. Sometimes I just don't know how to quit a losing trade. The more it goes against me the better the entry looks at this point and I just want to add more. Luckily this rarely happens anymore but when I started trading it happened more often than I'd like to remember.

One of the bad things about this happening and you getting out of the position profitably is that it has a negative Pavlovian condition effect. In other words it conditions you (subconsciously) to add to losers or hang onto losers past the stop point because in the past they've come back to break-even or profit and you've escaped injury. Problem is that you're setting yourself up for a big one...