Recovery behaviour is what happens in your first few trades after a losing streak ends. The healthy answer is invisible — same setup, same size, same standards. The behavioural failure modes are three:
- Reckless recovery — the trader sizes UP after the streak ends to 'win it back faster'. Doubles down at the very moment the edge has been most volatile; sequenced risk just tripled at the worst possible time.
- Timid recovery — the trader sizes DOWN to 'stay safe'. Misses the snap-back winners that typically follow a drawdown and prolongs the climb out of the trough.
- Performance recovery — same size as baseline but the win-rate degrades. The trader rushes recovery setups, takes marginal entries 'because I need a winner', and the aggregate win-rate slips.
The detector identifies losing streaks (≥ 3 consecutive losers), takes the first few trades after each streak ends, and compares those 'recovery trades' to the baseline (every trade NOT in a recovery window). Three flags fire independently; the dominant pattern is reported.
Across the analysis window: 4 identified losing streaks. The first trade after each streak averages 2× the trader's normal volume; recovery win-rate sits ~25 percentage points below the baseline rate.
Three patterns, three different fixes:
- Reckless — sized up after the streak. The fix is mechanical: a fixed-fractional rule for the first few trades after every streak-end. Never above the normal per-trade size, no 'just this once' exceptions. The math behind reckless recovery is exactly why account-blowing happens after a string of small losses, not after a single big one.
- Timid — sized down after the streak. Counter-intuitively almost as costly as reckless: the snap-back winners that typically follow a drawdown happen at half-size, the recovery climb takes twice as long, and the trader gets demoralised faster. Lock the post-streak size to the declared per-trade risk — the streak ended, the strategy didn't.
- Performance — same size, lower win-rate. The trader is rushing marginal entries 'because I need a winner'. The fix is criteria-discipline: write the A-grade setup criteria into the journal entry BEFORE entering the first 3 post-streak trades. Refuse anything that doesn't clear the bar.
When reckless AND performance fire together (sized up AND lower win-rate), the report says reckless because the volume signal is the more catastrophic of the two — the size compounds the win-rate drop into a quadrupled loss footprint.
Tier: Pro. Behavioural-discipline axis. Co-fires with Position-Sizing-Consistency (TRA-215) when the pattern is volume-shaped, and with the Discipline-Scorecard's risk-sizing axis. Pairs naturally with Revenge-Trading (TRA-219) — same root state (cannot accept the loss) but a different temporal lens (immediate re-entry vs post-streak first-trades).
How to read the card:
1. Hero (left) — the recovery vs baseline volume ratio (e.g. 2.0× = recovery trades are double normal size, 0.5× = half normal size, ~1.0× = same size). The verdict word above (Reckless / Timid / Underperforming) tells you which pattern dominates. 2. Two MicroStats — Recovery win-rate and Baseline win-rate side-by-side. The gap is the secondary read. 3. Hint line — pattern-specific. Each of the three failure modes has its own actionable intervention; the card's hint switches automatically based on the dominant pattern.
Re-look frequency: weekly. Recovery patterns stabilise after ~3-4 streak cycles; daily noise isn't useful here.
Tier: Pro.