03 · Level 3Position size, drawdown, margin calls, and the habits that empty an account faster than any bad entry. Twelve lessons.
Risk and the mind: how accounts survive
- 3.1
Risk per trade: the 1-2% rule
Deciding the money you can lose on one trade before deciding anything else. Everything downstream — size, stop, target — follows from that number.
- 3.2
Working out position size
Risk in money, divided by the stop distance in pips, divided by pip value. Three numbers you already have, in that order.
- 3.3
Risk and reward
What the ratio between stop and target does to the hit rate you need. The arithmetic is fixed; the ratio you can actually get is not.
- 3.4
Drawdown and losing streaks
How far an account falls from its peak, and why a run of losses is normal rather than evidence that something broke.
- 3.5
Margin call and stop out
The two thresholds at which a broker warns you and then closes your positions, and the numbers that bring an account to them.
- 3.6
Fear, greed and FOMO
The three states in which traders break their own rules, and what each one feels like from the inside while it happens.
- 3.7
Overtrading and chasing losses
Two patterns that turn one bad trade into a bad week: trading more often than the plan allows, and raising size to win it back.
- 3.8
Discipline: the rules you do not break
A short written routine before, during and after the session — the part of trading that is the same every day.
- 3.9
Signals, robots and copy trading
Three ways to hand decisions to someone else, what each one actually copies, and what stays your risk regardless.
- 3.10
Checking a broker in the local register
Where the register is, what to type into it, and which answers mean the licence does not cover what you were offered.
- 3.11
Tax on trading in your country
Which authority wants to hear about trading results, what kind of income they are treated as, and what records to keep from the start.
- 3.12
Taking your money out
The route a withdrawal takes, how long each step holds it, and the checks that stop one.