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Concerning risk per trade sizing


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Concerning risk per trade sizing

  #141 (permalink)
 
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 liquidcci 
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Big Mike View Post
I always think of trading as a competition against other traders. I think trading is every bit as much knowing what the other traders around you are doing as much as it is knowing what you want to do, and then of course recognizing when a bunch of traders are trapped -- and naturally, when you are (and to get out).

Mike

But Mike can you really see what other traders are doing. Market can be seen moving but to me knowing what they are doing is something different.

Many moons ago I traded against the specialist on slow moving AMEX stocks. I would just try to beat the specialist and take the 1/16 spread as the rules said if specialist was at front of line he had to let me go first. To a degree I could see where the specialist was trading and make my moves accordingly.. Of course once equities went to decimals spread got to tight so would no longer work.

However, in the futures market while I think it brings many comfort thinking they know what the other guy is doing I just do not believe it can be seen. The market is to big and fast with to many jumping in and out short and long on many different time frames and time horizons with different targets and stops. Now I do believe overall trends can be seen as collectively the market is moved by many participants. But that is still in a larger context so to bring it down to I am beating these guys who went short win I went long today just cant be measured or seen in my opinion.

However, my real point apart from my diatribe above is to say on a trade where I go long for example and they go short against my trade. Has that person really just personally traded against me. It is obvious we have two different opinions about the direction of the market but the time frame, the target , the stop etc all are different. We both may profit , we both may lose, or one may win and the other profit. But we will get out at different times so we are not really trading against each other. Money is not transferred from my pocket to that persons if i lose or vice versa. In that context the market is not zero sum.

"The day I became a winning trader was the day it became boring. Daily losses no longer bother me and daily wins no longer excited me. Took years of pain and busting a few accounts before finally got my mind right. I survived the darkness within and now just chillax and let my black box do the work."
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  #142 (permalink)
 
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trendisyourfriend View Post
Although it is adressed to Mike my answer to this is that a discretionary trader (the way i conceive it) does not feel the need to backtest in the same way as a mechanical trader would do. If you have a good understanding of what moves markets, what causes price to move and crowd psychology you would focus your attention on the process of trading not on triggers/signals or probabilities. You know the game is not about probabilities but about traders taking decisions and the impact it has on potential future order flow and future trend direction. The forward test is part of the process of trading, it is not an end in itself. A mechanical trader underestimates the value of skills in trading, he would look at markets as a big video game with red and green lights.


trendisyourfriend View Post
he would look at markets as a big video game with red and green lights.


That is not a good characterization of a mechanical trader. Much of what you put in your post a mechanical trader simply puts into a system and leaves it alone with minor slow adjustments to system as stats warrant. Believe it or not my mechanical system takes into account "a good understanding of what moves markets, what causes price to move and crowd psychology " as you stated is more discretionary. Took many years develop but once I did why introduce discretion and why not use probabilities? Probabilities just make sense and open up so many possibilities and very consistent profitability. Discretion way to much influenced by emotion and vooddooo let me "feel what the market is telling me Luke"

Video game big green lights hardly.

"The day I became a winning trader was the day it became boring. Daily losses no longer bother me and daily wins no longer excited me. Took years of pain and busting a few accounts before finally got my mind right. I survived the darkness within and now just chillax and let my black box do the work."
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  #143 (permalink)
 
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 monpere 
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trendisyourfriend View Post
Although it is adressed to Mike my answer to this is that a discretionary trader (the way i conceive it) does not feel the need to backtest in the same way as a mechanical trader would do. If you have a good understanding of what moves markets, what causes price to move and crowd psychology you would focus your attention on the process of trading not on triggers/signals or probabilities. You know the game is not about probabilities but about traders taking decisions and the impact it has on potential future order flow and future trend direction. The forward test is part of the process of trading, it is not an end in itself. A mechanical trader underestimates the value of skills in trading, he would look at markets as a big video game with red and green lights.

Ok, I'll bite again. Since we're talking about red/green lights, what exactly is wrong with that? Any red/green light system is as good as the method behind it. Good concept, good method, good system, crap concept, crap method crap system, that goes for mechanical, automated, discretionary, transcendental planetary alignment methods. The game is about probabilities for some and is about outsmarting thousands of other traders for others. What matters, is that what ever it is you do, is that you understand it, and you execute it well. But don't make the mistake of thinking you are doing something that your are not, because then you are just giving yourself a false sense of security.

As always, I am not just about the the atherial, vague, theoretical, mysterious, haiku, zen ponderings, or sports and traffic analogies applied to trading. So I will put teeth behind the rhetoric. In that spirit, here's a chart of my 'red/green light' system of the CL today. This time I am not putting my hand drawn arrows as I traded it. All the triangles and arrows on the chart are from the bare 'mechanical' indicator. The mechanical approach is, enter with a stop limit at the close of the bar with a triangle or arrow, 5 tick stop, 10 tick target, but I will give you the leeway to choose your target as you will. I trade with a break even algorithm, but I will not even include that in this example for simplicity. Now, Please examine every trade indicated by this 'mechanical' indicator on the included chart, and tell me what kind of day you would have had, if you traded this chart as is, mechanically, green light, red light, taking every signal.

I will save you all the math. At 2:1 risk/reward trading 1 single contract, 16 10tick winners, 10 5tick losers. I will add 1/2 a tick on each loser to average them out for slippage, and also add $5 commission for every trade, for a grand total of $920, in 4 hours just watching a red/green lights video game, trading a time frame that some of us would consider pure noise, and never risking more then $50 per trade.

Now, lets bring it back to the original intent of this thread. For the 1%-2% blanket risk followers, if I have a $20k account, which I would advise as a minimum to trade (lets even say a $10k just for kicks), What percentage of that account does $50 represent?


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  #144 (permalink)
 
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 Adamus 
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liquidcci View Post
But Mike can you really see what other traders are doing. Market can be seen moving but to me knowing what they are doing is something different.

Many moons ago I traded against the specialist on slow moving AMEX stocks. I would just try to beat the specialist and take the 1/16 spread as the rules said if specialist was at front of line he had to let me go first. To a degree I could see where the specialist was trading and make my moves accordingly.. Of course once equities went to decimals spread got to tight so would no longer work.

However, in the futures market while I think it brings many comfort thinking they know what the other guy is doing I just do not believe it can be seen. The market is to big and fast with to many jumping in and out short and long on many different time frames and time horizons with different targets and stops. Now I do believe overall trends can be seen as collectively the market is moved by many participants. But that is still in a larger context so to bring it down to I am beating these guys who went short win I went long today just cant be measured or seen in my opinion.

However, my real point apart from my diatribe above is to say on a trade where I go long for example and they go short against my trade. Has that person really just personally traded against me. It is obvious we have two different opinions about the direction of the market but the time frame, the target , the stop etc all are different. We both may profit , we both may lose, or one may win and the other profit. But we will get out at different times so we are not really trading against each other. Money is not transferred from my pocket to that persons if i lose or vice versa. In that context the market is not zero sum.

I think you're precisely correct because the market is a double auction mechanism where changes in price are caused by changes in the speed and size of the order flow and in the electronic markets today there's no further detail. We can't prove any ideas about trapped traders or stop running etc, but they can still be very good ideas to explain the order flow.

So at the end of the day it's our own personal decision whether we want to focus solely on the mechanical details of the market at work, or believe the ideas that offer explanations for it - and similarly, it's down to preference whether we focus on competitors similar to ourselves, or just on the price and the probabilities.

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  #145 (permalink)
 
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liquidcci View Post
But Mike can you really see what other traders are doing. Market can be seen moving but to me knowing what they are doing is something different.

I am not talking about trying to predict the future.

I am talking about making general assumptions. For example, if the market pushes up slightly above a DT or a prior resistance area, and you see a flurry of orders going off, only for it quickly to close low and fall back down, we can make the assumption that a lot of traders had their stops up there, and that any new long initiated on the breakout will have their stops likely hit if the market continues lower.

So I am not trying to see what any one single individual is doing, but what a collective of people as a whole are doing, generally lumped in as the "dumb money".

That said, we are getting pretty far off-topic which was "Concerning risk per trade sizing".

Mike

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  #146 (permalink)
 
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Big Mike View Post

That said, we are getting pretty far off-topic which was "Concerning risk per trade sizing".

Another view is that this discussion is very much linked to risk per trade sizing - at least depending on how one defines risk. In a mechanical system such as monpere has nicely illustrated - the risk per trade is $50 or so but the overall risk of using the mechanical system would be based on an estimate of the expectation of the system over any given period of time or # of trades. Of course, for any given mechanical system there is some minimum # of trades required to bring the expectation over that trade series in line with the estimated expectation for the system overall (based on the dispersion).

In any event, if you trading based on discretion where you are not simply following a mechanical system but actually making decisions based on the evolution of market events then it becomes trickier (monpere may say impossible) to establish risk per trade and sizing per trade based on a probabilistic approach.

Here's a question: Is there a way to measure risk that does not involve the calculation of probabilities? Or is risk a concept that only has meaning within the context of probabilities?

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  #147 (permalink)
Griff1
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Hi Everybody

A good topic here, as it is vital to keep losses small and under control, and Position Sizing is the best way I know of......

For those of you who want some extra reading the world Guru on Position Sizing is Van Tharp.

But, as others have already posted, Position Sizing just adjusts the number of lots/Shares/Contracts to keep your initial risk consistent across all your trades. Either by a % of portfolio or a set $ amount, it is the same

I would suggest 1-2% for Futures and Forex and 0.1% to 0.5% for Stocks, are sensible levels

Thanks

Steve

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  #148 (permalink)
 
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 Maisie 
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hi there more experienced traders,
a thought occurs to me. in my limited experience it seems that the longer price keeps knocking on a certain door, the more forcefully it ends up moving, whichever direction. if it keeps tapping the resistance, and finally breaks through seems like there's more of a chance of a big bold candle and what i call a "perfect rally" - no overlapping rally candles, and not too many wicks dipping down into the previous body. and conversely, if it keeps tapping on resistance but finally fails, the longer it has tapped the harder it falls. and also, time seems to be a factor. if price moves away from a support/resistance which is *old* it also moves more forcefully. is this my imagination? or known to be a statistical fact does anyone know. because if it is in fact true, you could use that info to size position better according to probability, if you know your old resistance/support levels and have them on yr chart.

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  #149 (permalink)
 
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First of all, wanted to say, good to see traders spending time thinking about one of the most important components of trading - risk management. As a few traders seemed to enjoy my post in "Confessions-" I will add my 2 cents here. Trading is a probability numbers game and the sooner traders accept and embrace this fact, the faster they will develop the mindset required to become successful in this business. Your job as a trader is to become an expert risk manager. Van Tharp, Mark Douglas and FT71 have done some good work in the area of probabilities and respecting the fact that the outcome of each individual trade is unknown using coin toss experiments and random entries. This is very hard for most traders to accept or believe as they have natural biases which are filtered through their belief structure and a strong human need to be right wanting certainty. This is further complicated by the fact that unlike many traditional gambling games the prices (cards) are revealed to all players in advance to make an informed decision. This makes traders mistakenly believe they have an edge on that individual trade rather than a statistical edge over a series of trades. What they fail to appreciate is that all the market players’ actions are unknown after placing their trade, regardless of what they believe their method is telling them regarding the probabilities. The only thing you can control as a trader is your risk (stop loss) and potential profit (targets). The outcome is an unknown variable.

If you read “Market Wizards” you will see that all the traders have their own unique strategies. The common thread is their respect and understanding of risk – this is key. Most of them only got this after blowing one or more accounts. Of course, many traders will read this and think they would never do that and they already respect risk – I beg to differ and let me explain why. In very simplistic terms, as human we are naturally drawn to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. The desire to avoid pain is always stronger and in trading this appears in the form of fears, such as, fear of losing, missing out, being wrong and leaving profits on the table. Once you have entered a position, if you don’t fully ACCEPT the loss on that trade opportunity, knowing that is the cost of finding out if it will work this time or not, you will be acting in a state of fear, whether it be a fear of losing or being wrong. This simple change in belief, transformed my trading as I no longer had a deep burning desire to reduce risk at the earlier possibility opportunity after entering the trade and instead let the probabilities play out. Why was I moving my stop to breakeven and getting trapped out of good winning trades – FEAR!

The only way to know how much to risk, is to first know your OBJECTIVES. This includes a pre-defined risk of ruin. Different traders will have different tolerances to risk and this will also play a part in determining the type of trading that is best suited to their personality – scalping vs swinging. Most individuals can tolerate a 10% drawdown without too much difficulty if they are trading risk capital. Beyond this it will vary depending on the individual. Most traders that I speak to believe they can tolerate much larger drawdowns until they actually experience them! By focusing on reward and not risk, they fail to appreciate the exponential impact and time to recover from larger drawdowns. This is where an understanding of simple statistics can play a big part in a trader’s ultimate success.

Here is a simple example: if a trader has a method which he has tested and found to have an average win rate of 50% and avg win/loss ratio of 2:1, what are the possible outcomes from a series of trades? What would be the average net gain/loss? Average R gain? Largest winner? Largest loser? Longest winning streak? Longest losing steak? Peak drawdown? Average time to recover? Probability of reaching certain drawdowns levels before reaching certain profit levels? These are all simple examples of statistics that you have to know in order to know how much to risk. It is no good reading a book or asking another trader for a generic figure – it is the same as asking to copy another trader’s system – it won’t work in the long run. Everyone has different objectives, risk tolerances, biases etc. Take the time and effort to figure out what suits you and learn some simple statistics. Knowing how many losers you can possibly have in a row, before you should consider there to be something wrong, is very powerful. Most aren’t aware that with a 50% win rate, 10 losers in a row is a possibility. If you are risking 2% per trade, you would be facing a 20% drawdown which may be your ruin point. FT71 did a good example of how increasing risk exponentially reduces the number of consecutive losers you can have before blowing an account. I adapted this, as I thought it would be more useful to know, how many losers I could have before reaching my own pre-defined ruin point, which is 20% annual drawdown (I have attached an example screenshot showing various risks per trade and the number of consecutive losers that you can have before reaching a 20% drawdown). I have pre-set daily, weekly, monthly and annual losses at which point if I hit them, I have to trade SIM for the remainder of that period and I would recommend this for most traders. Realise that if you have a 10% drawdown you need to make 11% to recover, 20% drawdown you need 25% profit, 30% drawdown you need 43%! Most don’t realise this until it is too late, as there comes a point where the odds of recovering becoming slim, so traders take on more risk in order to recover faster, which normally has a negative impact.

One of the most useful exercises you can do to change your mindset to thinking in terms of probabilities is the simple coin toss experiment that FT71 described the other day in his webinar, doing each day before trading. If you flip a heads, give yourself 2pts, if you flip tails, deduct 1pt and keep track in a spreadsheet repeating 100 times. This will simulate as 2:1 reward:risk methodology with 50% win rate. Over time you will notice that your focus shifts from the outcome of each coin toss to the equity curve and drawdowns that are produced. You can then start using that data to look at simple statistics and answering questions such as those I posted above. When you set your objectives first, you may be surprised how smaller % you actually have to risk to reach them, I know I was when I did the work!

When you start to become consistently profitable, you can then adapt your risk depending upon trading performance, however this is an advanced topic and I suggest most traders stick with a fixed % risk until they are able to do that consistently. The reason being is after experiencing a long winning streak, traders mistakenly believe they have mastered it and increase their risk only to see the inevitable drawdown accelerated and they are back to where they started. Only after seeing how they handle the drawdown in their equity curve can a trader realistically think about increasing risk. With regards to recommended %s since many will ask, I see no reason for an active day trader to ever risk more than 1% of their account, and that is at the top end. Most would be far better risking 0.25-0.5% and trading a size where they aren’t attached to the outcome of each trade and use tight stops in an attempt to reduce risk rather than through correct position sizing.

A few quotes that I have written down in my pre-trade plan are as follows to engrain powerful beliefs through consistent thoughts with regards to thinking in terms of probabilities:

1) Accept that trading it is about the ODDS of success over a SERIES OF TRADES (20 trades min) not individual trades – accept the RANDOMNESS of the outcome of individual trades & manage my trades per my plan and I will produce a consistent positive result, same principle rich casinos make money with. The game is being a 1 bullet sniper

2) NEVER hope that a position will go my way or fear that a position will not go my way – both these attitudes lead to unrealistic expectations, emotional decisions and negative attitudes. A position, once established, will result in whatever market action prevails. Once I place my trade, its fate is sealed. No amount of hope or fear will make the outcome any different

3) Only trade my TESTED method flawlessly – be myself, don’t try to trade like anyone else or let others influence me, trade only my beliefs – read my charts, find my edge and trade without hesitation – have a defined risk on every trade and understand that anything can happen

4) “I just WAIT until there is money lying in the corner and all I have to do is go over there and PICK IT UP. I do NOTHING in the meantime. In essence, by not wanting to trade, I have inadvertently transformed myself into a MASTER OF PATIENCE. By forcing myself to wait until there was a trade that appeared so compelling that I could not stand the thought of not taking it, I had vastly IMPROVED MY ODDS” (Jim Rogers)

5) I accept the 5 FUNDAMENTAL TRADING TRUTHS (Mark Douglas):
i) Anything can happen
ii) You don’t need to know what is going to happen next in order to make money
iii) There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any set of variables that define an edge
iv) An edge is just an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another
v) Every moment in the market is unique

Hope that gives some of you something to think about and consider.

Trade well
JJ


Trading is: Having the KNOWLEDGE to know when the odds are in my favour, having the PATIENCE to wait for that moment, then having the DISCIPLINE to handle the trade properly when it goes in my favour and properly when it goes against me
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 Big Mike 
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jamiej83 View Post
The only way to know how much to risk, is to first know your OBJECTIVES

Hi JJ,

Thanks for posting. You might also check out our Risk of Ruin discussion here:


I don't mean to pick apart your post one sentence at a time, but the one above sticks out.

I can define my risk prior to knowing the objective, if I want. My risk is 40 ticks (1R, 1% of account, whatever). There, done.

No clue what chart, time frame, or target -- but I can define my risk

So perhaps you can expand on this a bit so I can better understand your point.

I do agree with your post as a whole, and I always know my risk and target prior to entering a trade. I always calculate my target in terms of reward in risk multiples, and avoid taking less rewarding trades, as my trading style pushes me towards larger reward:risk even at the case of being wrong more often.

I also agree on your Market Wizards statement, and thought the exact same thing when I read the books. The one thing that stood out was they all had different approaches, yet were successful using basic principles of risk and confidence in their approach (confidence built over a long period of trading experience). This helped cement for me it is not about methodology, even though the overwhelming majority of traders focus solely on method and little else.

Mike

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