Monday, October 1, 2007

General Money Management

Trade Limit
For any given trade, the trader will not lose more than $X. If your last trade losses are greater than this preset amount, then you should determine what course of actions you will take. These actions will likely force you to stop trading for the rest of the day. This means that you should shut down your trading platform FOR THE DAY. You then should determine how the free time well be spent. You might want to re-evaluate the strategy that lead to your loss and make any changes if necessary, and then paper trade until you are certain that the strategy continues to work.

Weekly Limit
For any given trading week, you will not lose more than $X. If your weekly cumulative losses plus your last trade losses are greater than this predetermined amount, then you should decide what course of actions you will take. These actions should probably include terminating the rest of your trading for the trading day and the trading week. Again, you will shut down your trading platform FOR THE DAY and refrain from trading the REST OF THE WEEK. You should then decide on how the free time should be spent. Suggestions might be to re-evaluate the strategy, incorporate any changes if necessary, and paper trade until you are confident that the strategy continues to show a consistent profit.

Monthly Limit
For any given trading month, you will not lose more than $X. If your cumulative monthly losses plus your last trade losses are greater than this predetermined amount, then you should decide what course of actions you will take. These actions should probably include terminating the rest of your trading for the trading day and the trading week and the remainder of the month. You will shut down your trading platform FOR THE DAY, FOR THE WEEK, and FOR THE REST OF THE MONTH. You should then decide on how the free time should be spent. Suggestions might be to re-evaluate the strategy, incorporate any changes if necessary, and paper trade until you are confident that the strategy continues to show a consistent profit.

How Will You Handle Large Losses and Profits?

Your trading capital must be money that you can afford to lose. You need to determine at what point you will bring in more money in the event of a large loss. In addition youll need to define when you will take money out of your account as your profits increase.

How Will You Determine Your Position Size?

The size of your position should never exceed the limitations listed in your risk management rules. Something you might want to consider is that some strategies might have a high probability of success (e.g. trend continuation strategies) which enable you to adopt a more aggressive position size at entry. Other strategies might have a lower probability of success (e.g. reversal strategies) and your risk management rules may only allow for a more conservative position size at entry. However, once the trade and the new trend are established, you might want to think about adding to the position at predetermined continuation signals. This potentially allows you to increase your position size while at the same time maintaining a very low exposure to risk

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