Every edge has losing stretches. The depth of the drawdown, not the losses themselves, is what ends accounts.
A drawdown is the drop from your equity peak to its low point. It is not a sign the system is broken — it is the normal cost of a positive-expectancy edge running through variance. What matters is depth, because losses compound: the deeper the hole, the larger the gain needed just to get back to even. Down 10% needs +11% to recover; down 50% needs +100%. Keep the hole shallow and the math stays climbable.
A drawdown deeper than your usual for a run its size is often the first sign of over-sizing, tilt, or a slipping edge — not just a rough patch. Losses clustering beyond plan mean something changed in how you are trading, not only in the market. The logs tell you which: variance leaves your rules intact, while a real problem shows moved stops, skipped checklists, or one setup quietly dragging the rest down.
Cut size one tier until the drawdown stops expanding — smaller size buys time for the edge to reassert itself. Enforce a hard daily loss cap and no averaging down. Then review the deep stretch honestly: was it variance you sized correctly for, or rules you broke? A pre-committed limit is what turns a drawdown into a pause instead of a spiral.
Reading about R is the easy part. The journal makes you keep the stats — grade the setup before you know how it ends, and hear the one thing to fix next.
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