Rules for money management

As a currency trader, you should give utmost importance to proper money management in your trading. Most traders don't give much time to money management. They learn a few forex trading strategies and jump into live trading. After losing a good portion of their equity, they come back to money management. Don't do this.

Learn Trading Discipline
For you as a forex trader, the most important thing is to develop trading discipline in yourself. Discipline is the ability to plan your work and work your plan. You should give your trade the time to develop. You need not hastily take yourself out of the trade just because you are uncomfortable with the risk. Discipline is also the ability to continue to trade your system even after you have suffered a loss. All world class traders are highly disciplined in their trading.

Many traders become disappointed too soon when they don't achieve immediate success. Persistence is the most important quality a trader can possess. Those who quit too soon or apply their system haphazardly do not trade in the markets enough to allow their system to produce the wins they are looking for. To develop persistence, force yourself in the beginning to do everything to the rules of your trading system.

Follow Trading Rules
Learn to follow trading rules. The proper application of trades is one of the most important aspects of becoming a successful trader. It is also one of the most difficult to learn. The problem comes with the initial analysis of a market. When you study examples of past trades, it is much easier to recognize direction, entry, exits than if you are trading live. Recognizing opportunity in the now is much more difficult. Following trading rules and a trading system is no easy task. It requires discipline on the part of the trader to obey the rule that he/she is following even when the initial response or the opening trade does not work out. Trading rules are not perfect. They will fail you at times.

Learn To Accept Losses
You should learn to accept losses. Losses are going to happen in the course of trading. Since no trading system is 100% accurate. Even the flawless application of a trading system will create some losses. Develop the ability to admit your losses. Losses occur due to two reasons. The first is when the trader fails to follow the established and tested rules and guidelines of a trading system. The second is when the trading system fails to encompass unexpected changes in the market conditions.

Risk To Reward Ratio
You should always, always use stop losses in your trading. The idea behind the stop is to prevent a loss from running away too far. A stop is a market order placed a few pips away from the entry price in the event that price action turns and moves dramatically opposite from the anticipated direction. Many new traders think that a good entry into the markets for each trade is the key to success. Most are wrong, unfortunately. What is more important is trading with a good risk to reward ratio that has a high probability to making a profit. A risk to reward ratio compares the potential for reward with the potential for loss.

Risk is calculated by counting the pips between the forecasted entry price and the forecasted price at which you want to exit the market in case of a losing trade. A trader must view each trade as a business transaction. Reward is calculated by counting the number of pips between the forecasted entry price and the forecasted price at which you would want to exit the market in case of a winning trade. Reward is the expected number of pips that you want to make in a trade.

To manage risk properly, you need to look for high probability trades that have a risk to reward ratio of 1:2 or greater. This depends on the time frame that you want to trade. For example, if you are a day trader and you are looking for making only 30 pips in a trade, a stop loss of 15 pips is sufficient for the risk to reward ratio of 1:2. Suppose you are a swing trader or a position trader with a longer time frame. Your profit potential will be more on a longer time frame as compared to a shorter time frame. Suppose you are looking for 200 pips as your expected profit. For a risk to reward ratio of 1:2, you will need to set your stop loss at 100 pips.

The reason that you need to set a higher stop loss is that on a larger time frame, small trends occur within the larger trend. Retracements on shorter time frame is much smaller as compared on the larger time frame. Your trade is going to be recycled. In order to be not stopped out, you need to calculate your risk to reward ratio appropriately. Many traders agree that next to maximizing profits, the second most important thing for them is minimizing losses. A trading system that wins only 50% of the time on average can still be profitable. Most of the traders want to make money but dont know how to protect what they currently have.

You have 50% chance of the forex market going your way and 50% chance of going against you. It is just like flipping a coin. Suppose the trade does not develop in your favor and the market is going against you. You should cut your losses by using stop losses. In nutshell, you cut your losses and let your winners run. This simple 50/50 currency trading strategy earns a profit even when a novice trader might experience a loss. Consider different risk to reward ratios and how much you need to win to break even. For 2:1 risk to reward ratio, you need 67% winners just to break even. For a 1:1 risk to reward ratio, it means just 50% winners to break even. 1:2 ratio means only 33.5% winners. Never ever trade when the risk to reward ratio