The number one - most important thing - that you must learn and practice with your Forex trading is money management. Without money management, you're doomed to fail.This should be obvious. After all, if you didn't manage your money correctly in your household, you would go broke and perhaps lose your home. If you owned your own business and didn't manage your money correctly, you would not be able to pay your employees and suppliers and soon you would have to declare bankruptcy and lose everything.
The word "economics" comes from a Greek word meaning "household management", which includes management of the household finances.But while most Forex traders give lip service to the concept of money management, few really engage in it. Oh, they may tell themselves that they do, but it's pretty easy to disprove that, as there is so much failure in Forex trading. We just mentioned that if you were to run your own business without money management, you would fail and go bankrupt. Well, in a certain way, doing Forex trading is a form of running your own business. So with most Forex traders not doing money management, is it any wonder that most of them never make real money?Why would something as vitally necessary to success as money management not be practiced by the usual Forex trader? Again, why are so many people who are earning a decent, middle-class living in the world living paycheck to paycheck, barely able to keep up with the mortgage and the credit card bills? Well, why is it that so many people are unhealthy and overweight when we all know about what good diet and exercise do for your body?
Just as with eating healthy and working out, despite their benefits most people, including most who talk and talk about them, don't like doing them. They seem terribly cumbersome and burdensome things to have to practice.Money management seems the same way. Who wants to have carefully think about how much they will allow themselves to risk on a given trade, when they want to shoot for the stars with every trade? Who wants to have to think about how to cut their losses when they hit a "down" streak? Who wants to have to think about investing just a small percentage of her account every time, rather than just being profligate?
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Speaking of taking losses, with Forex money management comes the responsibility of knowing that you'll take losses. What's crucial about that knowledge is that only knowing how to respond to and recover from losses can you be a profitable trader. Here are some unpleasant facts about taking heavy losses:
For every 25% of equity lost, you need to make 33% gains just to break even.
For every 50% of equity lost, you need to make 100% gains just to break even. (Only 1% of all Forex traders are able to accomplish even this with one trade.)
For every 75% of equity lost, you need to make 400% gains just to break even.
For every 100% of equity lost, you need to make 1,000% gains just to break even.
As you can see from the figures, never risking too much and never shooting for the stars in any one trade are critical parts of Forex money and trade management. For correct and serious Forex money management, there are two basic approaches. One is the placement of frequent small stops with the aim of trying to make the serious money from the few big wins that will surface by chance. But some successful traders use the strategy of seeking out bundles of small "peanuts" gains by using none-too-frequent and large stops, with the aim being to make so many small profits that the few inevitable large losses add up to less than the profits.
The "equity stop", the "chart stop", the "margin stop", and the "volatility stop" are the four types of stops used by Forex traders. You must become familiar with all four of these and decide which ones are best for your trading strategy.
The placement of stops is the crux of Forex trading. Money management and trade management absolutely demand stop-placements. For more tips and a vital tool to not only help with your money management but to perfect your forex trading have a look at the FREE Forex Rogue video.