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.
Use of stop-loss at all times is practically one of the safest measures to take against losses. This is advisable not only to new traders but also expert traders. These expert traders, many times, depend on their ability to predict the market and forget to set stop loss only to discover they've lost all just because they took a short break.
Adjusting stop loss is a good way to minimize loss and to lock in profits. This is one thing I do in all the trades I have the time to monitor. I adjust my stop loss every time a significant amount of profit has come in and I get it locked in.
Stopping the trade when it's a loss position is one of the most difficult thing to do when trading. Many people believe there'll be turnaround and it will eventually end in profits. Sometimes, this happens and profits are made but many times, it ends in a loss.
So one should be able to know when to stop a trade and when to leave it.