A brief explanation on the importance of risk managementEvery human activity has its ups and downs. You may face good days and bad days and it’s a norm in any other human kind activities.
Read history! Did all dynasties get consistently stronger?
In politics, did popularity rates of political figures get better day by day?
Sure not!
Even in natural events, you see uneven decreases and increases. Not only the annual rainfall rates are not always the same, but the rate of increases and decreases varies from year to year.
So strategies and setups won’t always work because they simply are man-made things to predict a human-based activity! They may fail, expire or disused someday, because this is the neutrality of nature and creatures including humans and their markets. For the last instance, even stars grow and fall.
I know there are some traders who claim their strategy will never expire. They may be liars, but they are not necessarily liars! Those who believe their strategy will never expire will admit that their strategy had bad days too. I like to say their strategy has expired and reactivated again and since they consider longer cycles (monthly, yearly or even bigger) they believe their setup has never expired. If we want to be more precise their strategy has expired but just for shorter periods (may be just for hours!).
Let me explain a little more technical, every setup is compatible with specific conditions of the market and they will fail in other markets’ conditions and traders are not foreteller but predictors, so they sometimes may get conditions have changed and sometimes they predict it wrong or get the change so late! So they sometimes make profit and sometimes don’t. For example RSI overbought and oversold strategy do not make profit in trending market on the side of the trend! I mean if markets are bullish, overbought is a norm not a sign of reversal (most peak of reversals happens in overbought or oversold but not every oversold is a sign of reversal in a trending market) and in a super bullish trending market you almost can’t find any RSI oversold. So you should use another setup! ( some traders using kind of strategy which has different setups for different conditions of market, they actually guess when their strategy is going to expire)
I divide the professional traders by methods that they choose to avoid using an unsuitable for market conditions into four general categories.
1- Ignorers: Since they got a conservative risk management strategy and they could easily ignore expiration phenomena and trade without worrying about expiration.
2- Rule makers: They have different setups for different conditions. They specify some rules to distinguish market conditions and adapt new setups to their trades. Rules could be created by using both indicators or indicator-free (price action) chars.
3- Sentimental Market traders (in case of expiration): Some traders do not use specific rules! They simply just sense market conditions has changed. They differ from rule makers because they don’t use a specific rules every time. They may use some rules unconsciously but those rules may differ time to time.
4- Equity curve analyzers. They simply analyze equity curve! They make specific rules to start using or stop using a strategy! For example they will stop using it if it is a loss-maker one for 2 weeks (this one won’t work in most strategies) or they simply try to use price action rules to analyze EC of a setup! “Mark Douglas (1990) is saying that if traders were to chart their equity, these charts would look very much like the typical bar charts and charts like these also can have the same predictive value as in the markets” “Procedia Economics and Finance 32 ( 2015 ) 50 – 55” these kind of traders may use indicators like SMA or WMA to predict profitability of a setup in future and they are also eager to use price action rules.
I believe no method is superior to another, the way an experienced trader use the method is important! But having a method to avoid large losses is necessary. And all traders consciously or unconsciously use one of them. Most price action traders are ignorers. Their strategy may expire but for short period of time. For example mine is expired right now but I’ll continue using it cause I know it’s temporarily and I don’t know when exactly it will reactive again. I also use a self-made auto-trading expert which use different indicator based setup and since the period of expirations of that setups are long, I use EC analyzing methods to detect expirations .
No matter which method you use, you can’t be an always winner trader! Ignorers may loss and they will name it exceptions. Rule makers’ rules may detect and signal expiration too soon or too late! The 3rd and 4th kind of traders may make mistakes too. There is no single trader in the world with 100% win rate in long-term!
That's why you need to limit our risks, I like optimism in life (I prefer pessimism in back-tests) but you should not be deluded, you should think what happen if you lost some consecutive trades?
If you risk more than you can handle consecutive losses emotionally, You will empty your trading account, no matter how good a teacher you had or how much you have practiced or how great trading past you have or how experienced you are or even how much you believe your emotions are in control of you
(you actually can’t control in real big loses trading), YOU NEED TO LIMIT YOUR RISK by managing it in a way that your trading is profitable enough and simultaneously do not be destructive at certain times
"Profit a little less but more consistent."
There are also too many other important rules for money and risk management and you should take them into consideration too.
Best Regards, Alisignals
