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Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Money Management in Currency Trading (Part III)

By Ahmad Hassam

Live to trade another day is perhaps the best advice that you will receive in your trading career. Forex markets are brutal and unforgiving. You need to learn to survive in the markets.

The single most common factor that causes many traders to blow up their accounts is greed. When you get greedy, you start taking unnecessary risks. You will spend countless hours trying to discover the Holy Grail technical indictor or a forex robot that will make you rich. You believe that by discovering that secret of investing, you will become rich without losing a single trade.

Unfortunately there is no such Holy Grail for anyone. No one has ever found such a secret. You cannot always win. You will win and you will lose. Learn not to risk more than 2% of your account on one single trade. Grow your account incrementally and slowly over time. Never ever get into the temptation to risk big trying to make one single winning trade that can make you rich.

The most important thing that you should know is how much you are willing to risk in a single trade. This is more important than your trading strategy. I said dont risk more than 2% in a single trade. But if you are a risk taker and want to be aggressive, you can go up to 5%. Dont exceed 5%, stay between 1-5%. If you are risk averse and are conservative, on the other hand, you should consider risking between 1-2% only.

Once you have decided on the amount of risk you are willing to take, the rest is simple. Suppose you have a $50,000 account. You decide on a risk of 2% only. How much you can risk on a single trade? (50,000)(0.02)=$1,000. This is the maximum amount you should risk on a single trade.

However, if you are trading more than one position at the same time, the amount may become higher. Lets suppose, you are in 3 trades! You risk only $1,000 per trade. So the total money at risk will be (3) (1000) =$3,000. When you have determined your risk, you are can determine the trade size.

Trade size is the number of currency pair contracts you purchase in any one single trade. You need to first determine where you want to put your stop loss in order to determine the trade size. Lets use a simple example to make it clear and suppose you are willing to risk $1000 on trading EUR/USD pair. You decide on a stop loss of 50 pips. Each pip on EUR/USD pair is equal to $10, so the number of contracts that you can trade are 2= (1,000)/ (50) (10).

You have taken the guesswork out of your trading once you have determined your risk level and calculated the trade size. You can sleep well now knowing how much of your money is at risk. You are going to be able to trade tomorrow, no matter what happens today.

Using these common money management rules will help you avoid the pitfall of losing almost all the money in your account. Learning to survive the markets and trade another day is the essence of trading. This can help your trading take the next level of profitability. - 23212

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