Category: Risks

It is essential for Forex traders to be able to control their emotions. If you cannot control your emotions whilst trading, you will not be able to reach a position where you can achieve the profits you want from trading.

Why?

Emotional traders struggle to stick to trading rules and strategies. Traders who are overly stubborn may not exit losing trades quickly enough, because they expect the market to turn in their favour.

When a trader realises their mistake, they need to leave the market, taking the smallest loss as possible. Waiting too long may cause the trader to end up losing substantial capital. Once out, traders need to be patient and re-enter the market when a genuine opportunity presents itself.

Traders who are emotional following a loss also might make larger trades trying to recoup their losses, but consequently increase their risk. The opposite can happen when a trader has a winning streak – they might get cocky and stop following proper Forex risk management rules.

Ultimately, do not become stressed in the trading process. The best Forex risk management strategies rely on traders avoiding stress.

No one can predict the Forex market, but we do have plenty of evidence from the past of how the markets react in certain situations. What has happened before may not be repeated, but it does show what is possible. Therefore, it is important to look at the history of the currency pair you are trading. Think about what action you would need to take to protect yourself if a bad scenario were to happen again.

Do not underestimate the chances of unexpected price movements occurring. You should have a plan for such a scenario, because they do happen.

One of the big mistakes new Forex traders make is signing into a trading platform and then making a trade based on nothing but instinct, or maybe something that they heard in the news that day. Whilst this may lead to a few lucky trades, that is all they are – luck.

To properly mange your Forex risk, you need a trading plan that outlines at least the following:

• When you will open a trade
• When you will close it
• Your minimum reward-to-risk ratio
• The percentage of your account you are willing to risk per trade

Once you have devised your Forex trading plan, stick to it in all situations. A trading plan will help you keep your emotions under control whilst trading and will also prevent you from over trading. With a plan, your entry and exit strategies are clearly defined and you will know when to take your gains or cut your losses without becoming fearful or feeling greedy. This approach will bring discipline int your trading, which is essential for good risk management.

It stands to reason that the success or failure of any trading system will be determined by its performance in the long term. So be wary of apportioning too much importance to the success or failure of your current trade. Do not break, or even bend, the rules of your system to try and make your current trade work.

One of the best ways to create a trading plan is to learn from the experts. Did you know you can do this for free with our weekly webinars? Click the banner below to find out more and register!

One of the reasons new traders take unnecessary risk is because their expectations are not realistic. They may think that aggressive trading will help them earn a return on their investment more quickly. However, the best traders make steady returns. Setting realistic goals and maintaining a conservative approach is the right way to start trading.

Being realistic goes hand in hand with admitting when you are wrong. It is essential to exit a position quickly when it becomes clear that you have made a bad trade. It is a natural human reaction to attempt to turn a bad situation into a good one, however, with Forex trading, it is a mistake.

With this mindset, you can prevent greed coming into the equation, which can lead you into making poor trading decisions. Trading is not about opening a winning trade every minute or so, it is about opening the right trades at the right time, and closing such trades prematurely if the situation requires it.

Leverage offers you the opportunity to magnify your profits made from your trading account, but it can similarly magnify your losses, increasing the potential for risk. For example, an account with leverage of 1:30 means that on an account with $1,000, you can place a trade worth up to $30,000.

This means that if the market moves in your favour, you would experience the full benefit of that $30,000 trade, even though you only invested $1,000. However, the opposite is true if the market moves against you.

Your level of exposure to Forex risk is therefore higher with a higher leverage. If you are a beginner, a sensible approach with regards to forex risk management, is to limit your exposure by not using high leverage. Consider only using leverage when you have a clear understanding of the potential losses. If you do, you will not suffer major losses to your portfolio – and you can avoid being on the wrong side of the market.

Admiral Markets offers different leverages according to trader status. Traders come under two categories: retail traders and professional traders. Admiral Markets offers leverage of 1:30 for retail traders and leverage of 1:500 for professional traders.There are benefits and trade offs to both, and you can find out what is available to you by reading our retail and professional terms.

Forex risk management is not hard to understand. The tricky part is having enough self-discipline to abide by these risk management rules when the market moves against a position.

One of the fundamental rules of risk management in Forex trading is that you should never risk more than you can afford to lose. Despite its fundamentality, making the mistake of breaking this rule is extremely common, especially among those new to Forex trading. The FX market is highly unpredictable, so traders who put at risk more than they can actually afford make themselves very vulnerable.

If a small sequence of losses would be enough to eradicate most of your trading capital, it suggests that each trade is taking on too much risk.

The process of covering lost Forex capital is difficult, as you have to make back a greater percentage of your trading account to cover what you lost. Imagine having a trading account of $5,000, and you lose $1,000. The percentage loss is 20%. To cover that loss, however, you need to get a profit of 25% from the remaining capital in your account ($4,000). This is why you should calculate the risk involved in Forex trading before you start trading. If the chances of profit are lower in comparison to the profit to gain, stop trading. You may want to use a Forex trading calculator to assist with your risk management.

A tried and tested rule is to not risk more than 2% of your account balance per trade. In addition, many traders adjust their position size to reflect the volatility of the pair they are trading. A more volatile currency demands a smaller position compared to a less volatile pair.

At some point, you may suffer a bad loss or burn through a substantial portion of your trading capital. There is a temptation after a big loss to try and get your investment back with the next trade. However, increasing your risk when your account balance is already low is the worst time to do it. Instead, consider reducing your trading size in a losing streak, or taking a break until you can identify a high-probability trade. Always stay on an even keel, both emotionally and in terms of your position sizes.

A take profit is a very similar tool to a stop loss, however, as the name suggests, it has the opposite purpose. Whilst a stop loss is designed to automatically close trades to prevent further losses, a take profit is designed to automatically close trades once they hit a certain profit level.

By having clear expectations for each trade, not only can you set a profit target, and, therefore, a take profit, but you can also decide what an appropriate level of risk is for the trade. Most traders would aim for at least a 2:1 reward-to-risk ratio, where the expected reward is twice the risk they are willing to take on a trade.

Therefore, if you set your take profit at 40 pips above your entry price, your stop loss would be set 20 pips below the entry price (i.e. half the distance).

In short, think about what levels you are aiming for on the upside, and what level of loss is sensible to withstand on the downside. Doing so will help you to maintain your discipline in the heat of the trade. It will also encourage you to think in terms of risk versus reward.

A stop loss is a tool which allows you to protect your trades from unexpected market movements by letting you set a predefined price at which your trade will automatically close. Therefore, if you enter a position in the market in the hope the asset will increase in value, and it actually decreases, when the asset hits your stop loss price, the trade will close in order to prevent further losses.

It is important to note, however, that stop losses are not a guarantee. There are occasions where the market behaves erratically and presents price gaps. If this happens, the stop loss will not be executed at the predetermined level but will be activated the next time the price reaches this level. This phenomenon is called slippage.

A good rule of thumb is to set your stop loss at a level that means you will lose no more than 2% of your trading balance for any given trade.

Once you have set your stop loss, you should never increase the loss margin. There’s no point having a safety net in place if you aren’t going to use it properly.

There are different types of stops in Forex. How you place your stop loss will depend on your personality and experience. Common types of stops include:

• Equity stop
• Volatility stop
• Chart stop (technical analysis)
• Margin stop

If you find you are always losing with a stop-loss, analyse your stops and see how many of them were actually useful. It might simply be time to adjust your levels to get better trading results.

In addition, a protective stop can help you lock in profits before the market turns. For example, once you have opened a position and have a floating profit of $500, you can move your stop loss closer to the current price, so that if it was hit, your trade would close with some of your profit still in tact. If the trade keeps going your way, you can continue trailing the stop after the price. One automated way to do this is with trailing stops.

If you are new to trading, you will need to educate yourself as much as possible. In fact, no matter how experience you are with the Forex market, there is always a new lesson to be learned! Keep reading and educating yourself on everything Forex related.

The good news is that there is a wide range of educational resources out there which can help, including Forex articles, videos and webinars!

Even where a trader/customer’s medium to longer term view of the market may be ultimately correct, the trader may not be able to financially bear short-term unrealized losses, and may close out a position at a loss simply because he or she is unable to meet a margin call or otherwise sustain such positions. Thus, even where a trader’s view of the market is correct, and a currency position may ultimately turn around and become profitable had it been held, traders with insufficient capital may experience losses.