Money management: the only part of trading you fully control
You cannot control whether the next trade wins. You can control how much it costs when it loses. Almost every blown account comes from sizing decisions made after a loss, not from a bad read of the chart.
- 1–2% risk per trade keeps a normal 7-loss streak survivable.
- A 50% drawdown needs a 100% gain to recover — avoidance beats recovery.
- Daily loss caps prevent one bad session from becoming a bad month.
Fixed-fractional sizing
Risk a set percentage of the current balance on every trade — 1% while learning, 2% at most once profitable over 100+ logged trades. Recalculate the stake weekly rather than after each result, so a single win does not inflate the next position.
The point is not to maximise growth on the good days; it is to guarantee you are still trading after the bad ones.
| Risk per trade | Losses to −20% balance | Comfort level |
|---|---|---|
| 1% | ~22 consecutive | Sustainable long term |
| 2% | ~11 consecutive | Acceptable when proven |
| 5% | ~4 consecutive | Fragile — one bad session hurts |
| 10% | 2 consecutive | Account destruction is a matter of time |
Why drawdowns are asymmetric
Lose 20% and you need 25% to get back. Lose 50% and you need 100%. Lose 70% and you need 233%. The deeper the hole, the more the required return escapes what your edge can realistically produce — which is why capping losses matters more than maximising wins.
Set the cap before the session: three consecutive losses or 6% of balance, whichever comes first, ends the day.
Martingale converts many small losses into one huge one
Doubling after a loss looks like it works because it wins most sessions. The rare session it fails wipes out every gain that came before it, plus the account. Seven consecutive losses at a $5 base stake requires $640 for the eighth trade — and brokers cap stake sizes.
If you want to model this honestly, run your own numbers through the martingale calculator and look at the required capital column, not the profit column.
Same percentage every trade. Boring, and the only approach that reliably survives.
Increase stake only as balance grows, on a weekly recalculation.
Mathematically guaranteed to fail given enough trades and a finite bankroll.
Frequently asked questions
+What percentage should I risk per trade?
1% while you are still proving an edge, up to 2% once you have 100+ logged trades in profit. Never more.
+Should I increase stakes after wins?
Only via a scheduled recalculation as the balance grows, never mid-session on momentum.
+Does martingale ever work?
It wins often and loses catastrophically. Over a long enough sample the expected outcome is account loss.
+How do I recover from a big drawdown?
Reduce stake size, not increase it, and rebuild with a smaller percentage of a smaller balance. Run the numbers in the drawdown recovery calculator first.
Size the next trade properly
Put your balance and payout into the risk calculator, set the stake, then take signals from the app at that size — no exceptions.