Position Sizing StrategiesPosition Sizing
Traders spend much of their time looking at charts and analyzing using technical or fundamental analysis, or a combination of both. While this indeed is a very good thing to spend time on, not all traders take their time to focus on risk management, and more specific position sizing. I see a lot of new traders or old traders which trade only to have their accounts blown up by taking random positions with no plan whatsoever. Proper position sizing is a key element in risk management and can determine whether you live to trade another day or not. Basically your position size is the number of shares you take on a trade. It can help you from risking too much on trade and blowing up your account. Without knowing how to size your positions properly. You may end up taking trades that are far too large for your account. In such cases, you become highly vulnerable when the market moves even just a few points against you.
Your position size or trade size is more important than your entry and exit when trading or investing. You can have the best strategy in the world. But if your trade size is too big or too small, you will either take too much or too little risk. So how do you prevent yourself from risking too much? How do you know the right quantity to buy or to sell when you initiate a position? Let's say you have $10,000 in your account, and there's a stock valued at $100 you like and want to buy. Do you buy 100 shares, 10 shares, or some other number? This is the question you must answer to how to determine your position size. If you decide to spend your entire account balance and buy 100 shares, then you will have a 100% commitment to the stock and this is not indicated also in taking a position that represents a large portion of your total portfolio. There is also the opportunity cost involved, you will have to pass up other trades that you may have liked to enter.
Position Sizing is a critical issue that a trader needs to know beforehand and to do on the fly. It's as important as picking the right stock or currency to invest.
Position Sizing Strategies
☀️ There are several approaches to position sizing and I will run down some of the more popular ones.
1️⃣ The first one and the most common one is "Fixed percentage per trade".
Position Sizing can be based on the size of an overall portfolio.
This means a percentage of that overall capital will be predetermined per trade and will not be exceeded. That would be 1% or even 5%.
This fixed percentage is an easy way for you to know how much you are buying when you buy to use a simple example of fixed percentage position sizing. Let's take again the $10,000 account size and a $100 stock. If you take a simple one-person position based on your account size that comes down to a single share, you may be thinking you are no better than the person with a $100 account buying one share. The difference is that the $100 account holder has a 100% position size while the $10,000 account holder is putting just one percent at risk.
Which position size allows a trader to sleep better at night? Of course, the second position sizing helps control the risk. A 1% hard limit on each trade allows you to tolerate many losses in your search for profits.
Protecting your capital is your primary job. Your secondary job is allowing room in your portfolio to find other trading opportunities.
The fixed percentage amount is an easier approach to accomplishing this
2️⃣ The second risk management approach involves a "fixed dollar amount per trade". This approach also uses a fixed amount for this time. It's a fixed dollar amount per trade, rather than a percentage of the actual portfolio. This involves choosing a number again and using the same $10,000 portfolio as an example. So you decide you won't spend any more than $200 on any trade. For traders with small account sizes, this can be an attractive approach because it limits how much you can lose.
However, it also limits what stocks you can buy. You will have to roll out some securities based solely on their price. Of course, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
3️⃣ The third approach is "volatility-based position sizing"
A more complex approach, but one that allows for more flexibility is position sizing based on the volatility of the security you plan to buy. It's more dynamic because it doesn't treat each stock the same. This approach allows you to drill down and exercise finer control over your portfolio. For example, growth stocks will invariably be more volatile, and that volatility will be reflected in your portfolio. To reduce that overall risk on your portfolio. You wouldn't buy less high volatility stocks than you would lower volatility stocks.
You can measure volatility with something as simple as a standard deviation over a given period, say 15 or 10 trading days. Then depending on the deviation, you adjust the number of shares you buy when you initiate a position. This allows lower volatility stocks to have more weight in your portfolio than higher volatility ones. Position Sizing based on this ideology lowers the overall volatility within a portfolio. This strategy is frequently used in large portfolios.
Even longer-term traders and investors face position sizing questions for them when the price of a security with their holding goes down. It represents more value. Adding to their position, in this case, is referred to as averaging down. Long-term traders can decide to average down using similar position sizing approaches by risking either a fixed dollar amount or a percentage amount when the stock trades down you can use standard deviation here as well to help figure out the dollar amount.
Some additional common sense risk parameters seem worth mentioning and may be incorporated into your trade plan. For example,
Once you've figured out how much you're comfortable losing a stop loss level for each trade should be determined and placed in the market. A seasoned trader will generally know where to put their stop loss orders after having optimized their trading plan and chart analysis is often performed when setting stop-loss orders rules of thumb should be followed when you use stops to manage risk on your positions.
By now I hope you realized that correct position sizing is crucial. You should always consider how much you buy when you buy and also know how you came up with that number. Regardless of your account size. Take the time to come up with a consistent approach that matches your trading style and then stick to it. You can incorporate flexibility as well. For example, if you're willing to take more risks with your portfolio, you can die a lot of the person that you use. sound money management techniques can help make an average trader better and a good trader becomes great.
For example, a trader that is only right half of the time, but gets out of losing trades before the loss becomes significant and knows the right winners to a substantial profit would be way ahead of most others with trade with no clear plan of action whatsoever. And you have to find the right balance because if you risk too little and your account won't grow and if you risk too much, your account can be destroyed in a few bad trades.
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