Panic selling isn't a discipline problem, it's proof you never wrote an exit rule

Everyone talks about panic selling like it's a character flaw. I think that's backwards. You panic because you're sitting in a trade with no written exit, so every red candle becomes a decision, and decisions made while losing money are terrible.

I scored the same entry (20 day consolidation breakout, \~500 US stocks, about 5 years of data) with nothing changed except the exit rule. Numbers are gross of fees, and happy to be told I'm reading this wrong:

* 1% stop, 1:1 target: won 48% of 7,083 trades, lost money overall (profit factor 0.9)
* 2% stop, 2:1 target: won 37% of 6,215, barely positive
* 5% stop, 2:1 target: won 42% of 4,857, +1.3% avg per trade
* 5% stop, 3:1 target: won 35% of 3,958, +2.1% avg per trade

Same entries (20 day consolidation breakout) kept for all.

The tight leash "won" the most often and still lost money. The versions that made money won less often. **Panic protects your win rate, not your account.**

The panic exit is just the tightest stop there is, except you're running it without ever writing it down. Since I wrote mine down the urge has mostly gone away.

What's your exit rule, and did you actually write it down before the trade?