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I got trapped by my own fly trap last week.

Every September where I live, house flies invade. We try everything - sprays, swatters, those salt shooting guns. Nothing eliminates them, so we manage with sticky fly strips. You know the ones: gooey plastic strips that trap anything that touches them.

I was grabbing a tool from my garage pegboard when I accidentally brushed the strip. Made me flinch, which flipped the tape up onto my forearm. Without thinking, I grabbed it with my free hand.

Now I'm stuck to this thing with both my arm and hand.

You can't comprehend how sticky these strips are until you've got one in your arm hair. Regular soap does nothing. Water somehow makes it worse - turns the goo into permanent paste.

As I'm scrubbing with near-scalding water and pumice soap, cursing this adhesive nightmare, I realized: This is exactly how traders feel after they break their own rules.

The trapper becomes the trapped.

Why Your Trading Plan Becomes Your Prison

Just like that fly strip, we set up trading plans to catch profits. Good intentions. Strategic positioning. Leave it alone and let it work.

But then we get careless. React on instinct. Touch something we shouldn't.

Suddenly we're stuck worse than we ever planned. Takes seconds to get trapped, ten times longer to get unstuck.

Here's the brutal truth: Most traders don't get destroyed by the market. They get destroyed by their own emotional reactions to their carefully laid plans.

The Three Trading Traps That Destroy Accounts

Trap #1: Trading Your Feelings Instead of Your Rules

Your plan says don't trade. But the market is screaming "easy money".

So you touch it. Just a small position. What could go wrong?

Everything.

You're not following a system anymore. You're gambling on emotions. Even if you win, you can't repeat a lucky guess. That's not trading - that's slot machine thinking.

The fly strip works because it's positioned strategically and left alone to do its job. Your trading plan works the same way. Trust the process or get trapped by your impulses.

Trap #2: Sizing Positions Based on Confidence Instead of Math

Here's where traders get the stickiest.

Most people think like this: "I'm really confident about this trade, so I'll risk more." Wrong. Dead wrong.

The market doesn't care about your confidence. Position size should be determined by one thing: where your stop loss needs to be.

Here's the formula that saves accounts:

Portfolio Risk ÷ Trade Risk = Position Size

Real example:

• Your account: $10,000
• Risk tolerance: 2% = $200
• Chart says stop loss should be 4% below entry
• Math: $200 ÷ $400 = 0.5
• You trade half the position you originally wanted

Most traders do this backwards. They decide position size first, then squeeze their stop loss to fit their risk tolerance. That's like trying to fit the fly strip around your comfort level instead of where the flies actually are.

Set stops where the market dictates. Adjust position size to fit your risk.

Good risk management makes average systems great. Poor risk management turns great systems into account killers.

Trap #3: Chasing Losses with Bigger Bets

You're down. Your plan says stop trading. But you "know" the next one will work.

So you double down. Triple down. Revenge trade your way to zero.

That's not recovery - that's quicksand. The harder you struggle, the deeper you sink.

Cut losses fast. Live to trade another day. Your account doesn't care about your ego.

The Real Lesson From Getting Unstuck

It took me ten minutes of scrubbing to get that fly strip off my hands. Ten minutes of frustration I could have avoided by paying attention.

Most trading disasters work the same way. Quick emotional reaction, long painful recovery.

The difference between profitable traders and account killers isn't intelligence or market knowledge. It's discipline.

Follow your rules even when every instinct screams otherwise. Especially then.

Position size based on math, not confidence. Place stops where charts dictate, not where your wallet prefers.

The market is full of fly strips. Don't become the fly.

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