Money management strategy
Good lesson, trying to dig more into money management because it's the real holy grail.
thanks for your anaswer and really teh monaymanagment strategy tthe eh backbone for any trader
in the forex
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oney management is like the “elephant in the room” that most traders don’t want to talk about. It can be boring, embarrassing, or even emotionally painful for some traders to talk about risk and capital management, because they know they aren’t doing it right.
However, as with anything in life, talking about the “elephant in the room” is usually the best thing you can do to improve your Forex trading. This means, being honest with yourself and focusing on the “hardest” or most boring things first and as often as necessary. If you ignore these things they will typically grow into huge problems that you can no longer control.
In today’s lesson, I’m going to help you understand some of the more important aspects of managing your risk and capital as you trade the markets. This lesson will answer many questions I get from traders asking about breakeven stops, trailing stop losses, and more. So let’s get started…
Keep risk consistentThe first “secret” I’m going to tell you about is to keep your risk consistent. As Marty Schwartz said in the the market wizards article that I quoted him in, “Also, don’t increase your position size until you have doubled or tripled your capital. Most people make the mistake of increasing their bets as soon as they start making money. That is a quick way to get wiped out.”
Why do I consider this a “secret”? Well, since most traders have a tendency to increase their risk size after a winning trade or after a series of winners, this is typically something you want to avoid. Basically, doing the opposite of whatever “most traders” do can be considered a “secret” of trading…and when it comes to money management there are quite a few of these “secrets”.
I’m a strong proponent of keeping risk consistent not only because it’s how other professional traders operate, but because of lessons learned from my own personal experience as well. Earlier in my career, I was the guy cranking up my risk after a winner…and finally after realizing that this was not the right thing to do, I stopped. Also, from my observations of traders that I help, I know that many traders increase risk after a winner, and this is a big reason they lose…
After you win a few trades you have a tendency to become over-confident…and I should stress that there’s nothing inherently wrong with you if you do this or have done it; it’s actually human nature to become less risk averse after winning a trade or multiple trades. However, it is something you’ll need to put an end to if you want to make money trading the markets. If you’ve read my article about the one thing you need to know about trading, you would know that even if you’re following your trading strategy to the T, your winners and losers are still randomly distributed. This means, after a winning trade there is no logic-based reason to think the next trade will also be a winner….thus no reason to increase your risk size. But, as humans, we like to gamble….and it can be really hard to ignore the feelings of euphoria and confidence after hitting a nice winner…but you HAVE TO if you want to manage your money effectively and make a living in the market.
Withdraw profitsAs we discussed above, keeping your risk consistent or “fixed” is one of the keys to successful Forex money management. Professional traders do not jack up their risk exponentially after every winner…this is not a logical or real-world way to manage your risk. Professional traders who make their living in the markets withdraw money from their accounts each month and most will keep their accounts funded to around the same level each month. If you’re withdrawing profits every month then you would not keep increasing your risk amount over time.
What you need to do is build your account up to a level your comfortable with, and then you can start withdrawing profit each month to live off of…thus the amount you risk on each trade would not keep increasing because eventually your trading capital will reach an “equilibrium” level.
Moving a stop loss to ‘breakeven’ can kill your accountThe big secret regarding breakeven stop losses is that you should not move your stop loss to breakeven unless there’s a real price-action based, logical reason to do so. Moving your stop loss to the same level that you just entered at doesn’t make sense if there’s no reason to do so. Moving to breakeven arbitrarily or because you have some pre-decided “rule” to do so is simply not an effective way to manage your trades. How many times have you moved to breakeven only to see the market come back and stop you out and then move on in your favor? You have to give your trades “room to breathe”, and if there’s no reason to tighten your stop or move to breakeven, then don’t.
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What you might not realize, is that messing around with your stop loss or manually closing trades out before they’ve had a chance to move, is voluntarily reducing the ability of your trading edge to work in your favor. In short, if you don’t have a logic-based reason to move to breakeven, then you’re moving to breakeven based on emotion; mainly fear. You need to overcome your fear of losing money, because losing part of being a successful trader, and until you learn how to let a trade breathe and move without your constant interference, you will not make money.
Now, I’m not saying that you should never move to breakeven, because there certainly are times when you should. Below are some logical reasons to move your stop loss to breakeven:
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• If an opposing signal causes caution and changes market conditions you can take that as a logic-based reason to move to breakeven.
• If the market approaches a key chart level and then starts to show signs of reversing, you should take that as a signal that the market might indeed reverse and then trail your stop to breakeven.
• If you’ve been in a trade over a few days and nothing is happening, you mi