"I think the price will bounce back, so let me widen my stop loss a bit" — does that sound familiar?

This is the beginning of one of the most common traps in trading.
When your position goes against the market, you're often unwilling to cut losses and take the stop out. Your brain begins searching for excuses to keep holding.

It starts with just expanding your stop loss range, then you might consider "averaging down,"
and sometimes you might even delete the stop loss order altogether.
At this point, you've abandoned the discipline of your trading system and are simply enduring the loss out of fear of admitting you were wrong.

Your decisions are no longer based on analysis or data, but are driven by the false hope that "maybe the market will reverse and at least let me break even."
But the market never cares about your expectations.
The insidious nature of this trap is that it always wraps itself in self-justifying logic.
You'll gather all sorts of reasons to convince yourself that the price "should" move in your favor.
However, once you move your stop loss without objective basis after entry, your trading plan has already been fundamentally broken.

How do you respond?
The moment you catch yourself holding a position out of hope for a reversal, close it immediately.
This isn't self-punishment; it's about restoring rational judgment and preserving your capital.
A position driven by false hope will ultimately erode both.