I was coaching a long time student last night and it occurred to me that most traders do not consider proper position sizing when trading. In fact, most beginning traders have no clue what I’m talking about because they just pile money into each trade, one at a time and see what happens.
Really it’s like betting all on black in Las Vegas – either you make it big or you don’t. Those are not the odds I want…
Position sizing when trading is of course subjective. What can be good for one trader could be bad for another. But you still need to have something in place and so I decided to put together this very quick guide.
Share your own personal position sizing rules, thoughts, etc in the comments to let other traders see what you are doing.
Set A Firm Stop Loss Level
There must be a place on the charts where you call it quits. This is the area where the charts via technical analysis tell you that it was a bad trade and you were wrong. Remember, we are all going to have losses; it’s the traders that learn from them that prosper.
To determine position sizing you must first set a firm stop level. As a rule of thumb, a trader should not risk more than 1-3% on a single trade. Less is better, but don’t put your stop too close so that any minor movement in the market will hit it quickly. Larger accounts are likely to risk much less than 1% of capital on many trades.
Be Consistent With Your Positions
If you really want to develop a great system then you have to be consistent with position sizing. For example, if you are risking 4% of your money per trade then always risk 4% unless you change your rules. There is no trade out there that is SO great that it requires more money than your max risk per trade – period.
Let’s look at two examples…
$10,000 Account Position Sizing
As a simple example for educational purposes, let’s assume you have $10,000 to trade with. You have decided that you can have a maximum loss of $200 if we risk 2% of our capital on each trade. Doesn’t sound like much money but if you cannot manage $5,000 effectively how are you going to manage $500,000 one day?
To determine how many option contracts to buy we take our 2% investment of $200 and divide it by the price of the call/put. If the call/put is trading for $20 each then we are going to only buy 10 contracts.
Once we have our position sizing all figured out, we have our stop set on each trade at a 2% max loss. If it’s hit then we are done and get out – bad trade, move on and forget about it. If the position starts to turn a profit however then consider moving up your stop loss to lock in the profit. Simple right!
$100,000 Account Position Sizing
Things change when you have more money. You have to be even more risk adverse and protective over your portfolio. Believe me; I lost $10,000+ the very first week I was trading at home. I thought I was a big shot and didn’t have a plan laid out and paid big time for this valuable experience. Therefore it was much quicker to lose money.
If you have a $100,000 account let’s assume that you only want to risk 1% or $1,000 per trade. Larger accounts should of course be risking less per trade unless you are a crazy day trading cowboy.
But the same method above is applied to this larger account. You take your max risk per trade and divide it buy the number of contracts you want to buy. Using the same price as above, if the call/put is trading for $20 then we would need to buy more than 50 contracts!
Larger accounts that trade this many contracts can also benefit from cheaper commissions and better use of account margin requirements. Still, you need to make sure that you are properly addressing your risk tolerance level. Have a system and work the system!
How Do You Size Your Positions?
Whether we risk a percentage of our account on each trade, or choose a fixed dollar amount we all do it differently. Don’t be bashful in sharing your own personal view on position sizes, stop loss, allocation in the comments section. You can also ask for help and suggestions on position sizing for a particular trade or account you have…
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