Guide

Why people stop copying at the worst time

Every broker knows the scenario: someone starts copying a strategy after a fine run of winning months, goes through their first drawdown, stops everything at the low, then watches the strategy's account recover without them. They took the loss and missed the recovery. This guide explains why this scenario is so common, and how to guard against it by deciding before, rather than during.

What goes on in the mind

These reactions are not beginner's mistakes. Behavioural finance has documented them for a long time, and they affect everyone.

A loss hurts more than a gain pleases. This is loss aversion: for the same amount, losing weighs about twice as much as winning. An account going from €1,000 to €700 triggers a far stronger emotion than the one felt when it had risen from €1,000 to €1,300.

The last figure seen becomes the reference. After seeing the account at €1,300, seeing it at €1,000 feels like a €300 loss, even though you are back to your stake. You no longer compare with the starting point, but with the peak.

The present feels final. In the middle of a drawdown, every down day seems to announce the next. You forget that the previous drawdowns, seen on the chart, also looked endless at the time.

You want to act. Waiting without doing anything, while the account falls, is uncomfortable. Stopping the copy gives a feeling of taking back control. Yet it is the one action that turns an unrealised loss into a real one for certain.

You remember the figures, not what you felt. Reading “worst drawdown: 75%” on a page and seeing your own account at minus 75% are two unrelated experiences. The first is accepted in a few seconds; the second is lived for days.

Why the low is so often the moment people leave

The low of a drawdown is, by definition, the moment when the unrealised loss is largest, hence the moment when the pain is at its peak. It is also when worried messages multiply in the groups, when people look for opinions and find alarming ones. Everything pushes in the same direction at the same instant.

There is a further asymmetry: whoever quits at the low and then watches the strategy recover remembers that choice for a long time. Whoever stayed and saw the account come back soon forgets the fear they felt. The stories that circulate are therefore mostly those of missed exits, which reinforces the idea that “one should have left earlier”, while the useful lesson lies elsewhere.

What this guide does not say

It does not say you should stay whatever happens. A drawdown can also be the start of a permanent loss: a strategy may never come back, and the past does not guarantee it. Stopping can be the right decision. The question is not “stay or leave”, but “decide calmly or in the heat of the moment”.

Decide before, not during

What protects you is having set your rules before the first drawdown, while you are still thinking calmly.

Know the strategy's worst past drawdown, and apply it to your own money. If a 75% drawdown on your stake is unbearable to you, the time to find out is before copying, not during. The Risks page has a simulator for that.
Know what the global stop loss does, and what it does not. The global stop loss of the copy account closes everything and stops the copy when equity falls below the level set. Our set-up guide asks for it to be set at the maximum, 95%, and no lower: the strategy manages risk itself at the level of each trade, and it needs that room to get through a drawdown. A tight stop loss would trigger on an ordinary drawdown and turn an unrealised loss into a real one, exactly the scenario described above. The 95% setting is therefore not a protection against drawdowns, it is a last safety net. What is decided calmly is not the stop loss level, it is the amount you accept to expose to that net.
Only put in money you do not need. A drawdown on money needed in six months is lived very differently from a drawdown on savings you can leave alone. It is the most powerful factor of all.
Look less often. Equity moves every second. Checking it ten times a day during a drawdown means feeling the loss ten times. The monthly reports give the same result with far less emotion.
Write your rule down, and stick to it. “I stop if equity falls below this amount” or “I touch nothing before this date”. A rule written before can be reread during; a rule invented during is not one.
Remember that staying is no guarantee. A rule set calmly may lead you to leave. What matters is that the rule decides, not the fear of the moment.

And at PlanetFinance?

The strategy counts 47 / 47 closed months at a gain since November 2022, but that figure only counts closed positions. Between two month ends, it has gone through deep floating drawdowns, the worst estimated at about 75% in April 2025, on a basket eventually closed at a gain (position sizes have been reduced since). During those periods, the 95% global stop loss was not reached and the strategy could carry its positions through to their close; a copier who had set it lower would have seen the copy stop on a real loss before the recovery. Nothing says the drawdowns to come will resemble the previous ones, nor that they will end the same way: that is precisely why the decision is made beforehand.