Kate Bush & Peter Gabriel - Another Day

A song performed by both Kate and Peter, this was performed on Kate's Christmas special, 1979. This song was written by Roy Harper.

Kate Bush & David Gilmour - Running up that Hill - Live SPB

Kate Bush singing Running up that Hill with Dave Gilmour on guitar and backing vocals

47. Why Position Sizing is So Important in Trading

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A lesson on why position sizing is one of the most important aspects to consider when trading the stock, futures and...   more http://www.informedtrades.com/
A lesson on why position sizing is one of the most important aspects to consider when trading the stock, futures and forex markets.

So far in the lessons leading up to this one we have covered some of the different methods traders use to pick their entry points, as well as some of the different methods which traders use to set their exit points. In this lesson we are going to look at the factor which ties all of the above together and allows a trader the greatest control over their returns: Position Sizing.

While position sizing is one of the Key components of successful trading, like many of the other things we have covered, it is often overlooked as an unimportant aspect of trading. What successful traders know however is that once the psychology of trading is mastered and a trader has developed a sound strategy for picking their entry and exit points, it is the method they use to determine the size of the positions they trade that is the final factor which will lead to their success or failure.

To help illustrate this lets say that three traders are each given $10,000 and the same EUR/USD Mini Forex strategy to trade which has a win rate of 60% (makes a profit on 6 out of 10 trades) and makes an average profit on winning trades over the long term of 100 Points. On the losing side, this same system has a lose rate of 40% (takes a loss on 4 out of 10 trades) and takes an average loss on those trades of 90 points.

So here we have a trading strategy that has more winning trades on average than it does losing trades, as well as a strategy that when it does lose it loses less than what it does when it wins. I think most traders including myself would take that system any day of the week.

So we give these traders each this system and tell them to come back to us after 10 trades and show their results. As the system is the same for all traders, when they bring us back the trading results of their systems the entry points and exit points for each trade is going to be the same, leaving them only the position size as the factor that they can tweak.

As they are trading mini EUR/USD forex contracts the value of a 1 point move is $1 per contract traded. With this in mind after 10 trades the system produces the following results:   less