What’s the sensible amount of risk the issue should take for each trade that you place as a forex trader? Let’s talk about that important subject and more right now.

Hey there, traders! Andrew Mitchem here, the owner of the Forex Trading Coach video and podcast number 535.

Preserving capital.

Today I want to talk about risk preserving capital, keeping your drawdowns low. And it all comes back to how much should you place on a trade in order to be a successful trader.

Control your emotions.

You see, for me in trading, there’s two things you have to control. One’s up here, the head ones in his heart. You have to keep those emotions under control. And you can do that quite easily by controlling your risk, because the fear and the greed always come into the trading as self doubt. But then greed when it comes to making money. Risk management is absolutely crucial. And unfortunate, far too many people don’t know that and they don’t know how to control that and they don’t know how to implement that practically on day by day basis into their trading.

You see, I think there’s a lot of people out there that just don’t know how much risk they’re placing on a trade that is place to trade. And they got I’ve got a 20 pip stop loss and I’m going to put one lot on it or 0.1 lots. Because that’s just what they think they should do. That is not how you trade.

Have a low and known risk per trade.

For me, the best way of trading is to have a known and low risk on every single trade. So you go into a trade and it doesn’t matter what the currency pair is or even what the market is. I’ve taken a trade on Corn this week, you know, and it doesn’t matter where it’s corn on a weekly chart or the EUR/USD on a four hour chart, it doesn’t matter.

Every single trade has the same risk. It’s known and it’s low. So you have to adjust your position. Size according to a stop loss needs to be in order to calculate that. And it’s very easy. And I have a free lot size calculator that does all that for you. But by doing that it means that every single trade that I take has the same risk, and by doing that, I can control my emotions and I can control my drawdowns.

Most people suggest a 3-5% risk per trade.

Now, you have a search out there online, and you’ll find that most people will tell you to risk somewhere between about a 3 to 5% risk per trade. I think that’s utterly crazy. You know, you have, let’s say four trades go wrong and you’re instantly 20% down on your account. Now, you need a lot of good trades to go right to make that 20% up just to get to break even. Now, that in itself is not a good way to trade.

For me personally, I risk half of 1% per trade. So my four trades go wrong. I’m now 2% down. When I’m trading on a prop firm, I risk half of that again. So I risk only 0.25% risk per trade. In other words, if four trades go wrong, I’m now 1% down.

That is within the rules, the criteria of a prop firm. It means I can have multiple trades all go wrong in a row, which is incredibly unlikely to happen. But let’s say it did before I get anywhere near the maximum drawdown at most prop firms, which is somewhere between so maybe 5% or 6%, that will never happen if you’re trading such a low risk per trade.

So it’s really important that you preserve capital. You treat your trading as a real business, treat it seriously, and you can do really well.

A +2% gain for the week.

Just give me an example. This week on my prop firm. So I’m trading here 2 hours through the 12 hour charts on that prop firm. This week, I’m up 2% so far and we still got a whole day to go.

And I’m only risking 0.25%, a quarter of 1% risk per trade. Now, if I end up the week with someone like 2%, maybe slightly more, maybe slightly less, you know, depending on how today goes, I might do that, say four weeks in a row. And I’ve passed that prop firm four into five weeks because of compounding all my gains.

I’ve now passed that 10% challenge, and that’s how you can get through and trade prop firms, if that’s the route you want to go. Now, of course, on my own personal account, if I’m doing that at half percent risk, you know, that suddenly becomes a 4% gain so far for this week. So it shows the gains that can be made while still keeping your risk extremely low and preserving your capital.

Attend my Masterclass and book a call with us.

So I hope that helps with that situation. If you’d like to know more and it haven’t been on my free one hour masterclass, I’ll put a link here below this video on podcasts you can do that is on demand. So just find a time that suits you. Allow about and hour and jump on to that masterclass and it will give you a huge amount of information and trading tips and information of how you can become successful.

Trade through Blueberry Markets.

And if you’re out there looking for a really good broker, I can highly recommend Blueberry Markets. They base over in Australia, they offer the MT4 and the MT5 platform, a huge number of markets and various timeframe charts obviously built into the MT5 platform as well. And if you’re out there looking for a good broker, I highly recommend them and I’ll put a link to Blueberry Markets on this video and podcast as well.

So any questions you have, any topics you’d like me to discuss on future sessions? Please email me. Andrew@TheForexTradingCoach.com if you’re on YouTube, please like and subscribe and feel free to share this video and I’ll see you this time next week. Bye for now!

Episode Title: #535: The One Secret to Becoming a Successful Trader

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#535: What’s a Sensible Amount of Risk to Take per Trade

What’s a Sensible Amount of Risk to Take per Trade

Podcast:

Signup For my Forex Masterclass

Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here

Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course

Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now

Click Here to Download my Lot Size Calculator