Trading Expert Discovers Ways To Beat
Stock Market Odds With Money Management.
The first point to mastering money
management is that you have to understand when you’re trading
on the stock market is that you are playing the odds – but
unlike many forms of gambling, you can make money.
The key to making this money is to respect the risk that is
part of the market, and manage it. Money management is a set of
rules and guidelines that enables you to turn a profit.
By being triumphant with your money management skills, you
can keep your risk at a level at which you’re comfortable with,
keep from making poor trading decisions, and ensure you don’t
loose your trading capital. This is why it is so important to
follow money management rules.
Why do these money management rules work? You know, it’s
funny. I once thought I had a fool-proof way of making money on
roulette. You see, I’d bet on red and black. I’d sit at the
table. After the ball had landed on black or red five times in
a row, I would start betting on the opposite color.
Let’s say I had five reds in a row. I would then start to
bet on black. If I was wrong, I would go ahead and double down,
so that if I started my bet at one dollar, the next time I
would be able to bet two dollars, then four dollars, then
eight, then 16. With this system, eventually I’d win and I’d
come out one dollar ahead.
So, here I am at 23 and I’ve set up my computer program to
test my theory. I made a ridiculous amount of money in the
program. I really thought I had the Holy Grail here. But, if
it’s so easy for an 23 year old to figure it out, why aren’t
all the casinos out of business and why aren’t we’re all
millionaires? Unfortunately, roulette doesn’t work this
way.
You see, if we’re flipping a coin, heads has a 50 percent
chance of turning up on each flip of the coin and so does
tails. But, each flip is independent of the last. The last coin
toss has nothing to do with the one before it, each flip is a
random event. This means it’s possible to get a hundred heads
in a row if you do it long enough, and believe it or not,
that’s what happened to me. When I first played roulette in a
casino, I saw a string of 23 blacks in a row. I went home
defeated.
Trading is the same. A percentage of your trades will not
work out. A certain percentage will not go in your favoured
direction, and the next trade has nothing to do with the last
one. Even if you have the world’s most accurate method, over
time you will go broke if you don’t practice good money
management.
Money management rules include defining your trading float,
setting your maximum loss, calculating your stop loss, and most
importantly learning how to choose your position size. Once
these rules are in place, it’s important to stay with them.
They will keep you from making snap decisions, and playing the
odds longer than you should. This is why money management rules
are a critical part of any effective trading system.
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