If your seeing wild fluctuations in your trading portfolio, and not of the upwards kind, then your forgetting a critical piece of knowledge. To be a successful trader, you MUST cut your losses short, and let your profits run. It is THE most important lesson to learn, right up there with using a stop loss, and key concepts like support and resistance. To be a highly successful trader, you need to learn to pyramid your profits, greatly amplifying your gains, and turning the big winners, into true home runs.
Risk management is one of the most crucial elements of your trading system. Badly managed risk will lead to eventual losses, while well managed risk will lead to profits. A basic principle of speculation is that no more then 5% of your portfolio should be at risk during any trade. On a $50000 portfolio, thats $2500 at risk. This does not mean that you cant invest more then $2500 into a given trade, but it does mean that when setting a stop loss, you need to decide on position sizing accordingly.
This can be easily demonstrated with an example. Let us say we have company XYZ trading at $20. There's strong support at $18, so we set a stop loss for 17.50. This means we have a potential $2.50 loss per share. If we are risking $2500, and can lose up to 2.50 per share on this one, 1000 shares should be our maximum position size.
Now here is where the idea of pyramiding your profits comes in. If you think that $20 stock is going to $25, then with your 1000 shares, there's a potential for $5000 in profits. Not bad at all, but that number could be much higher. After that $20 stock goes up to $22.5, you move your stop loss up higher, possibly to around $21.00. Now you've locked in gains of $1000, and you can add that to your risk amount of $2500 for this trade. You now have $3500 to risk on this trade. Since you can lose $1.50 a share from where you currently are, $3500/1.50= 2334. This means you should increase your position by another 2300 shares.
Now lets analyze your position for a second. You bought 1000 shares at 20, and 2300 at 22.50. If it goes to 25, then you made $5000 on the original 1000 shares, and another $5750 on the second set of 2300 shares. If it goes down to your stop at 21, then you made $1000 on the original 1000 shares, and lost $3450 on the second set of $2300 shares, for an overall loss of $2450 (about the same as the risk you were willing to take on). The same idea can be applied to shorting stock as well. Just remember " add to your position as you become profitable, but keep your maximum loss relatively constant factoring in the unrealized gains.
Yet the applications of this strategy are important not just for the short term trader; it can be used by long term investors as well. Assuming its an up trending stock, long term investors would be well served to start with smaller positions, with a stoploss, and essentially add to the position on breakouts. This allows you to profit from the frequent megatrends in the market, while being taken out of the market if it begins going against you.
This strategy is the natural embodiment of the saying, cut your losses short and let your profits run. Its also in stark contrast to another bit of conventional wisdom, you never go broke taking a profit. While its true that you never go broke taking a profit, the size of the profits in relation to the size of the losses is very important. Pyramiding your profits increases your stake in whats working, while cutting out what isn't, and that's how you make money in the markets.
The key to success in trading is to have big gains, and small losses. By doing so, you can be wrong half the time, and still make money in the market. By pyramiding your profits, you insure big gains and small losses. Using this stock trading strategy, you can truly cut your losses short, and let your profits run. - 23210
Risk management is one of the most crucial elements of your trading system. Badly managed risk will lead to eventual losses, while well managed risk will lead to profits. A basic principle of speculation is that no more then 5% of your portfolio should be at risk during any trade. On a $50000 portfolio, thats $2500 at risk. This does not mean that you cant invest more then $2500 into a given trade, but it does mean that when setting a stop loss, you need to decide on position sizing accordingly.
This can be easily demonstrated with an example. Let us say we have company XYZ trading at $20. There's strong support at $18, so we set a stop loss for 17.50. This means we have a potential $2.50 loss per share. If we are risking $2500, and can lose up to 2.50 per share on this one, 1000 shares should be our maximum position size.
Now here is where the idea of pyramiding your profits comes in. If you think that $20 stock is going to $25, then with your 1000 shares, there's a potential for $5000 in profits. Not bad at all, but that number could be much higher. After that $20 stock goes up to $22.5, you move your stop loss up higher, possibly to around $21.00. Now you've locked in gains of $1000, and you can add that to your risk amount of $2500 for this trade. You now have $3500 to risk on this trade. Since you can lose $1.50 a share from where you currently are, $3500/1.50= 2334. This means you should increase your position by another 2300 shares.
Now lets analyze your position for a second. You bought 1000 shares at 20, and 2300 at 22.50. If it goes to 25, then you made $5000 on the original 1000 shares, and another $5750 on the second set of 2300 shares. If it goes down to your stop at 21, then you made $1000 on the original 1000 shares, and lost $3450 on the second set of $2300 shares, for an overall loss of $2450 (about the same as the risk you were willing to take on). The same idea can be applied to shorting stock as well. Just remember " add to your position as you become profitable, but keep your maximum loss relatively constant factoring in the unrealized gains.
Yet the applications of this strategy are important not just for the short term trader; it can be used by long term investors as well. Assuming its an up trending stock, long term investors would be well served to start with smaller positions, with a stoploss, and essentially add to the position on breakouts. This allows you to profit from the frequent megatrends in the market, while being taken out of the market if it begins going against you.
This strategy is the natural embodiment of the saying, cut your losses short and let your profits run. Its also in stark contrast to another bit of conventional wisdom, you never go broke taking a profit. While its true that you never go broke taking a profit, the size of the profits in relation to the size of the losses is very important. Pyramiding your profits increases your stake in whats working, while cutting out what isn't, and that's how you make money in the markets.
The key to success in trading is to have big gains, and small losses. By doing so, you can be wrong half the time, and still make money in the market. By pyramiding your profits, you insure big gains and small losses. Using this stock trading strategy, you can truly cut your losses short, and let your profits run. - 23210
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