Skip to content
GetProfitable
Search
Dictionary

Recovery days

Scheduled time fully away from markets, planned in advance rather than taken when you collapse.

Performance in every demanding domain depends on recovery as much as on work, and recovery has to be planned because it never feels urgent. Traders routinely go months without a day away from charts, then take a week off in the middle of a drawdown when the damage is done.

Real recovery means no screens, no scanning, no just checking. Watching the market on a day off is work with the reward removed.

Put it in the calendar: a weekday off each month, a full week each quarter, and a fixed daily finish time. Weekly flat periods also give the behaviour-journal something to compare against, since rested weeks and depleted weeks tend to look very different in the log.

Related: burnout, sleep-debt, exercise-and-trading, screen-hypnosis

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

An equity curve and its drawdownAn account balance rising over a year, falling from a peak to a trough, then climbing back to the old peak.ACCOUNT EQUITY$20k$12k$8k024681012TIME (MONTHS)PEAK $16,000TROUGH $12,000DRAWDOWN−25%RECOVERY
Equity curve and drawdown. An account balance plotted month by month. The fall from the $16,000 peak to the $12,000 trough is a 25% drawdown, and the shaded area lasts until the balance climbs back to the old peak.

Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.