Do You Hope & Pray?

When learning to trade it is easy to get seduced into making impulsive unplanned trades with no Trade Plan or trying to force the markets into giving you some profit when the market isn’t ready to give it to you. Plus, of course, there is the issue of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and Revenge Trading or trading with so much open Risk that you are near to blowing up your trading account! On top of all that is the likelihood that you are not using a Stop Loss All the above can lead you to being in a losing position and starting to stress, worry, sweat, swear and ‘Hoping’ and ‘Praying’ that the market will turn around and get you back to a Break Even or better position.

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How Good Is Your Risk Management?

As the Brexit Referendum looms, it seems an apt moment to write something about Risk and Risk Management.

BrexitThe UK Brexit Referendum is clearly a High Risk news event and probably far to close to call at the moment, whatever your view.  Other High Risk news events include General Elections, the monthly Non-Farm Payroll (normally the first Friday of every month) and also other events such as the minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee and BOE Minutes and Interest Rate Decisons by Central Banks various.

As a trader you need to be aware of such High Risk events and conduct your trading accordingly.  The last thing you need to do is expose your trading account to too much risk in the run up to such often highly volatile events.  Better to scale back or not trade than to essentially toss a coin and become in effect a gambler.

There are many ways you can control your risk when trading: Continue reading