Ok today I want to talk a little bit more about my trading, so that it will be easier to understand for you.
First of all I am trading for a living for 10 years now and for me capital preservation is the most important factor. Without capital I cannot trade and I cannot make money.
That is the reason why I am talking about my Risk- and Money management today. I will talk about my entries later, because they are far less important than my Risk and Money management.
During the last 10 years my hit rates is on average 62% of course it is higher or lower from time to time.
Due to the fact that I don’t have any magic indicator and that I cannot predict the markets I do not know which trade will work out for me and which one won’t. That is the reason I am entering most of the time with ¾ or ½ of the risk my first position.
For example HP my Buy Stop Limit was 53.10 USD and my initial stop was 48.80 USD. Let’s assume we have a 250 K account and we want to risk 1.5% per trade. This means 1 risk unit for me is 1.5% for another trader 1 risk unit could be 2% etc.
Unfortunately I forgot to post this column so far that is the reason why I improved the excel sheet with this column. For HP my risk unit was ¾ instead of 1 because most of the times I want to test the market first.
Remember my goal is capital preservation that is the reason I am acting very cautious.
No let us do the math:
1.5% of 250 K = 3750 USD = 1 Risk Unit
No let’s check out the HP trade where I only used ¾ of 1 Risk Unit.
¾ Risk Unit = 2812.50 USD that is the amount I am willing to lose with the HP trade.
Now let’s calculate how many shares we can buy.
Entry: 53.10 USD; Stop: 48.80 USD; Risk 4.30 USD
This means I can buy (2812.50 USD / 4.30 USD) shares (654)
IMPORTANT: Do not forget to calculate the transaction fees, because they will add up over one year. I always calculate 1 cent per share, but if you compare brokers you can find flat rate deals with 9.99 USD for 5000 shares. It always depends on your Portfolio size. Always try to find the best deal, because it is hard enough to make money in the markets but it is much easier to save some money to boost the performance. Just do some calculations what amount of money you can save over 10 years.
I will try to do more and more explanations about my trading. If you have any questions please ask me I will try to answer your questions.