Closing out a trade for a small loss, before it hits your stop loss, is an example of letting fear control you, and doing so directly limits your profit potential because you’re not giving the trade proper time to play out and you’re also voluntarily taking a loss. Yes, you may avoid some full stop-loss length losses by exiting a trade early, but this will not be the case every time, and so the times it’s not the case, it means you’re going to be taking a loss while also eliminating a potential winning trade, and this is very dangerous and it’s not how you build your account or make money over the long-run.