Some trades we take are in wrong direction but because we want to be hopeful that it will come back to profit, we allow it and it close against us. If we keep doing this, it is the exact opposite attitude of someone that wants to keep their initial capital.
There are steps you can take to reduce the loss before you lose every thing or it get to your stop loss and such is
1. Stop the trade: This is very good but difficult for many traders to do it but if you do that, you have potential loss that you have saved.
2. Use of stoploss all the time: This help your losses to be minimal.
3. Try to adjust your stoploss: You can do this if your trade is already in profit and you suspect that it is going back to your entry price, so you can take your stoploss to entry and all the order to run for profit or it stops at your entry.
I think this type of trading has become more or less a full time job. Think of it like this. Currently the market is so volatile that it moves more than 20-30% in a day. I had a strategy before the wave it was keeping the stop loss below the ATR but after this bull run ATR has become so high that if you put a stop loss below the ATR your risk/ reward ratio gets ruined itself. Moreover in this choppy market there are too large wicks therefore the stop loss gets hit and markets reverts back to normal stage pretty quickly. Now what is the solution in such cases?