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Managing Risk Efficiently in Six StepsManaging Risk Efficiently in Six Steps Any analyst or trading guide will tell you how important it is to manage your risk. However, how does one go about managing that risk? And what exactly do they mean by managing risk? Here is a step-by-step guide to one of the most important concepts in financial trading. 1. Determine Your Risk Tolerance This is a personal choice for anyone who plans on trading any market. Most trading instructors will throw out numbers like 1%, 2% or on up to 5% of the total value of your account risked on each trade placed, but a lot of your comfort with these numbers is largely based on your experience level. Newer traders are inherently less sure of themselves due to their lack of knowledge and familiarity with trading overall or with a new system, so it makes sense to utilize the smaller percentage risk levels. Once you become more comfortable with the system you are using, you may feel the urge to increase your percentage, but be cautious not to go too high. Sometimes trading methodologies can produce a string of losses, but the goal of trading is to either realize a return or maintain enough to make the next trade. For instance, if you have a trading method that places one trade per day on average and you are risking 10% of your beginning monthly balance on each trade, it would only theoretically take 10 straight losing trades to completely drain your account. So even if you are an experienced trader, it doesn’t make much sense to risk so much on one single trade. On the other hand, if you were to risk 2% on each trade that you place, you would theoretically have to lose 50 consecutive trades to drain your account. Which do you think is more likely: losing 10 straight trades, or losing 50? BALANCE $10,000 10% $1000 10 $10,000 5% $500 20 $10,000 3% $300 33 $10,000 2% $200 50 $10,000 1% $100 100 2. Customize Your Contracts The amounts of methodologies to use in trading are virtually endless. Some methods have you use a very specific stop loss and profit target on each trade you place while others vary greatly on the subject. For instance, if you use a strategy that calls for a 20-pip stop loss on each trade and you only trade the EUR/USD, it would be easy to figure out how many contracts you may want to enter to achieve your desired result. However, for those strategies that vary on the size of stops or even the instrument traded, figuring out the amount of contracts to enter can get a little tricky. One of the easiest ways to make sure you are getting as close to the amount of money that you want to risk on each trade is to customize your position sizes. A standard lot in a currency trade is 100,000 units of currency, which represents $10/pip on the EUR/USD if you have the U.S. dollar (USD) as your base currency; a mini lot is 10,000. Currency Trading If you wanted to risk $15 per pip on a EUR/USD trade, it would be impossible to do so with standard lots and could force you in to risking either too much or too little on the trade you place, whereas both mini and micro lots could get you to the desired amount. The same could be said about wanting to risk $12.50 per pip on a trade; both standard and mini lots fail to achieve the desired result, whereas micro lots could help you achieve it. In the realm of trading, having the flexibility to risk what you want, when you want, could be a determining factor to your success. 3. Determine Your Timing There may not be anything more frustrating in trading than missing a potentially successful trade simply because you weren’t available when the opportunity arose. With forex being a 24-hour-a-day market, that problem presents itself quite often, particularly if you trade smaller timeframe charts. The most logical solution to that problem would be to create or buy an automated trading robot, but that option isn’t viable for a large segment of traders who are either skeptical of the technology/source or don’t want to relinquish the controls. Trading Signals That means that you have to be available to place trades when the opportunities arise, in person, and of full mind and body. Waking up at 3am to place a trade usually doesn’t qualify unless you’re used to getting only 2-3 hours of sleep. Therefore, the average person who has a job, kids, soccer practice, a social life, and a lawn that needs to be mowed needs to be a little more thoughtful about the time they want to commit. Perhaps 4-Hour, 8-Hour, or Daily charts are more amenable to that lifestyle where time may be the most valuable component to trading happiness. Another way to manage your risk when you’re not in front of your computer is to set trailing stop orders. Trailing stops can be a vital part of any trading strategy. They allow a trade to continue to gain in value while the market price moves in a favorable direction, but automatically closes the trade if the market price suddenly moves in an unfavorable direction by a specified distance. When the market price moves in a favorable direction (up for long positions, down for short positions), the trigger price follows the market price by the specified stop distance. If the market price moves in an unfavorable direction, the trigger price stays stationary and the distance between this price and the market price becomes smaller. If the market price continues to move in an unfavorable direction until it reaches the trigger price, an order is triggered to close the trade. 4. Avoid Weekend Gaps Many market participants are knowledgeable of the fact that most popular markets close their doors on Friday afternoon Eastern Time in the US. Investors pack up their things for the weekend, and charts around the world freeze as if prices remain at that level until the next time they are able to be traded. However, that frozen position is a fallacy; it isn’t real. Prices are still moving to and from based on the happenings of that particular weekend, and can move drastically from where they were on Friday until the time they are visible again after the weekend. How to Trade Forex This can create “gaps” in the market that can actually run beyond your intended stop loss or profit target. For the latter, it would be a good thing, for the former – not so much. There is a possibility you could take a larger loss than you intended because a stop loss is executed at the best available price after the stop is triggered; which could be much worse than you planned. Managing Risk Efficiently in Six Steps While gaps aren’t necessarily common, they do occur, and can catch you off guard. As in the illustration below, the gaps can be extremely large and could jump right over a stop if it was placed somewhere within that gap. To avoid them, simply exit your trade before the weekend hits, and perhaps even look to exploit them by using a gap-trading technique. 5. Watch the News News events can be particularly perilous for traders who are looking to manage their risk as well. Certain news events like employment, central bank decisions, or inflation reports can create abnormally large moves in the market that can create gaps like a weekend gap, but much more sudden. Just as gaps over the weekend can jump over stops or targets, the same could happen in the few seconds after a major news event. So unless you are specifically looking to take that strategic risk by placing a trade previous to the news event, trading after those volatile events is often a more risk-conscious decision daily forex signals 6. Make It Affordable There is a specific doctrine in trading that is extolled by responsible trading entities, and that is that you should never invest more than you can afford to lose. The reason that is such a widespread manifesto is that it makes sense. Trading is risky and difficult, and putting your own livelihood at risk on the machinations of market dynamics that are varied and difficult to predict is tantamount to putting all of your savings on either red or black at the roulette table of your favorite Vegas casino. So don’t gamble away your hard-earned trading account: invest it in a way that is intelligent and consistent. MANAGE YOUR TRADES, MONEY & RISK So will you be a successful trader if you follow all six of these tenants for managing risk? Of course not, other factors need to be considered to help you achieve your goals. However, taking a proactive role in managing your risk can increase your likelihood for long term success.
XEducation
by fxpremiere
1
Trading Stocks vs Options: Which Is Better? I’m Markus Heitkoetter and I’ve been an active trader for over 20 years. I often see people who start trading and expect their accounts to explode, based on promises and hype they see in ads and e-mails. They start trading and realize it doesn’t work this way. The purpose of these articles is to show you the trading strategies and tools that I personally use to trade my own account so that you can grow your own account systematically. Real money…real trades. Stock Trading vs Options Trading Stock trading vs options trading, what should you trade? What is better? Is it better to trade stocks or is it better to trade options? That’s what we’re going to talk about today. I will also show you practical examples from trades that occurred today, so let me jump onto the desktop. Now, I want to use an account size of $20,000 as an example here where I’m comparing whether it is better to trade stocks versus options. Depending on your account size, just multiply the numbers that I’m showing you by whatever your account size is and you’ll get the idea. So the idea is, on a $20,000 account, we want to risk 2% of the account. This would be $400, nothing more. Comparing Stock Trading vs Option Trading Now, as we are comparing stocks and options, here are the things that I want to compare. First of all, I want to write down how much we are risking stock trading vs options trading. I also want to write down the reward, how much are we planning to make on the stock or the option. Based on this, I want to write down the risk/reward ratio, and also very, very important, the buying power. What is the buying power? The buying power is the amount of your account that you need to reserve for this trade. It is not the risk and you’ll see this in just a moment. Let’s take a look at some very specific trades that happened this morning. INSW Stock Trading vs Option Trading The first trade that I want to discuss is INSW . So this morning (at the time of this writing) on the PowerX Optimizer, INSW came up as a trade, as a buy to open. And the idea here is that we are buying 239 shares based on a $20,000 account at $22.84. Our stop loss was at $1.67 and I was trading 239 shares. I want to keep it a little bit easier for all of us with the math so let’s round up and call it 240 shares. What is our risk? Per one share, we are risking $1.67 and we are trading 240 shares, meaning that our risk is exactly $400.80. So here let’s just round it to $401. Now, what is the potential reward that we are looking for? Here we are looking for a reward of $8.62 per share. $8.62 times 240 shares, so we’re looking to make $2,069. So we’re putting this into our table, $2,069. So the risk/reward ratio here, PowerX Optimizer is calculating it, it’s 1:5.16 so let’s just say 1:5.2. Now for the buying power. Again, we are buying 240 shares, and the cost per one share is $22.84, so we need $5,482 in buying power. So this is how much our buying power will be reduced when we enter the trade. Now, let me ask you, is this making sense thus far? Just so that you know what happens when you’re trading the stock? And again, we are trying to risk around 2% of the account here, $401. Now, let’s take a look at the option here. So I prefer to trade the in the money, I’ll do another article on the difference between ITM and ATM. But here we are talking about the $22.50 call, and the risk was $172 per one option. So if we want to risk $400 overall, we’re dividing this by 172 and we can trade 2 options risking $344. We’re risking a little bit less and this is just based on the price of the option. In terms of the reward, we’re looking to make $6.80, it’s $680 per one option and we are trading 2 options, meaning that if this trade works out, we would make at least $1,360. Now, according to The PowerX Optimizer, we were making a little bit less. So let’s take a look at the risk/reward, the PowerX Optimizer calculated for us. So the risk/reward was slightly lower at 1:3.95. Now we’re rounding it up so it’s 1:4.0. So as you can see, the risk/reward ratio when trading the option is slightly worse but here’s the deal. What is the buying power that we need for this? The buying power that the broker will deduct from the overall buying power in the account is our entry price. So here we were trying to enter at $2.16, we can round it up to $2.20, and since we are trading 2 options this means that our buying power is $440. Can you already see what the difference is between stock trading vs options trading here? Your buying power is less than 10%. Now, keep in mind, the buying power is not what you’re risking. The buying power is just how much of your $20,000 is being held in reserve for this particular trade. So you can’t use this money anymore. If you trade the stock, you would still have around $14,500 left. However, if you’re trading the option, you would still have $19,500 left. Is this making sense thus far? TVTY Stock Trading vs Option Trading The other trade that I want to show you is TVTY . Here we wanted to trade 392 shares, so let’s just round it up to 400. Now let’s discuss the risk first. So the risk is $1.02 per one share. We’re taking $1.02 times 400 shares, meaning that we would risk $408, which is still within our parameters. We were planning to risk around $400 so here it would be a little bit more, it would be $408. Now, if this trade works out, here is what the reward would be. So the reward is $5.61, that’s how much we are trying to make on this trade. And if we take the $5.62 times 400 shares, we are trying to make $2,248. So the risk/reward, if we look at this, is 1:5.5. Now, here is the buying power that we would need. TVTY is trading at $11.30, so this is where again, $11.30 times 400 shares, we need $4,520 in buying power. Again, not a big deal if you’re trading a $20,000 account, it will be reduced and you’ll have less money to trade right now, around $15,500. Very, very, very important, this is not the risk. This here is the buying power that is needed. Our risk is $408. Our risk here per one option is $141. So if we want to risk $400 overall, we’re dividing it by $141, it’s 2.83. Now, in order to make it all a bit easier to compare apples with apples here, I am actually saying that we would trade 3 options, and $141 is what we are risking per one option, so $141 times 3. It’s a little bit more than our $400, but I think we are still OK here. So we would risk $423. Now the potential reward per one option is $444. So this is where we take $444 times 3, and again, this is where we are looking at $1,333. As you can see, the risk/reward ratio here is worse than if we would trade the stock. It is 1:3.15 so we are rounding it again to 1:3.2. Again, it would be better to trade the stock, but you’re using quite a lot of your buying power. For the option, all you need, all that is reduced, is your entry price, and the entry price it’s $2.47. So let’s say $2.50 times 3 is $750. As you can see you need less buying power, but you also have a smaller reward. But this is why I say usually on a smaller account, it makes sense to trade options instead of stocks. Now the other important thing, especially when you trade a retirement account, is that you don’t get a margin account. This means that you cannot leverage the money that you have in the account and you cannot short stocks. So in the US, in a retirement account, you cannot short stocks. However, what you can do in a retirement account is that you can trade put options, and with put options, you can bet on a falling market. So this brings me back to the question… What is better, stock trading vs options trading? Well, this is why I wanted to show you a direct comparison using a real-life example. This way you see exactly when it is more advantageous to trade stocks, and when it is more advantageous to trade options. Long story short, often for smaller accounts, since you use less buying power, it makes more sense to trade options. And now you have a direct comparison between stock trading vs options trading that will hopefully help you decide what is best for you.
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
Risk Management: How to set a Take Profit (TP) for your trades Hello everyone: Today let's dig into an important topic of setting a Take Profit (TP). While many traders will often have different strategies and methods on a TP, let's take a look on my approach and style on this. ITs important to understand there is no right or wrong when it comes to setting a TP. ITs what you have in your plan and what makes sense to you as a trader. It should align with your strategies and trading style also. Some may take profit quicker and move on, while others hold for longer term. Understand that both methods can have drawbacks, it's what trading is, double edge. So, make sure we follow our plan and executive accordingly to our management. Otherwise we are just making emotional decisions again. Let's look at a few scenarios on how I would set a TP. Directly tie in TP is a SL. I usually will only enter a trade if I have 3:1 RR. Meaning risking 1% to gain 3% or more. Therefore my TP will almost always be 3 times of initial SL amount or room. Few TP scenarios: -Beginning of the the previous correctional structure -Double Bottoms/swings low area, watch for LTF reversal price action and correction When price breaks ATH, monitor the price action on the LTF for bearish reversal. I would want to see a trend change, rather than a pullback. Few things to consider: -Understand you will never enter at the lowest point, and exit at the highest point Make sure you have a plan before so you will not get into an emotional decision. Always know what you plan to do before it happens. No Right or wrong as long as you follow your original plan. You can of course in time modify your plan based on market conditions. Any questions, comments or feedback please let me know :) Thank you
OANDA:XAUUSDEducation
by jojofang0901
27
Celebrate the Chinese new year with BABA tendiesAlibaba has made a nice inverted head shoulders on the daily after coming down from an ATH of 319. You can also see the 21 ema (blue line) crossing over the 50 ema (black line). There is also a nice gap above the 280.97 level to 290. Seeing patterns form on the daily time frame, as well as an ema cross over is what you like to find when looking for an explosive move, the higher the time frame the more effective your technical analysis will be. Major resistance: 280.97, above this level there is a gap to fill to 290 Minor resistance: 273-274 zone Price target: I am planning on taking this trade to 290 and will watch to see how price reacts once the gap is filled, expect a pullback after the gap is filled
NYSE:BABALong
by thefinancialworld
1
Last Week Trades EURUSD OnlyLast week Feb 8 - Feb 12, I only took 3 trades out of the entire week only on EURUSD. My first trade I was looking for a somewhat small push back down but the liquidity above was greater and that was something I over looked. Not a big deal but now its some thing I learned. My Second trade I had the right idea but I calculated my entry a little early and I ended up getting stopped out. I knew my entry was they only thing that was wrong because of the schematic still playing out on Thursday. So I entered again I believe on a 15 or 30m institutional candle with minimal drawdown price moved down to the next institutional candle. I did miss the rally off the order block but it was a Friday and I just wanted to take my profits and leave. All together last week was a gain of 3.50%.
Short
by tazionn
2
Long CRM - SalesforceHi Folks, I'm new to charting so if there's any CMT's taking a look, please feel free to criticize. Anyways, on to the chart. I like the setup for CRM here. It appears a classic Island Reversal Pattern has completed and the prices are ready to move higher. I also like the risk reward ratio. Traders can risk down to the 50DMA with a reward potential up to the prior resistance. If resistance is broken then prices could reach the prior highs. So. you'll risk $15 for a $25 upside with potential to $41. I'll be entering a position tomorrow when the market opens. Thanks for looking and GLTA.
NYSE:CRMLong
by Breakout_Charts