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- Hesitation in entering once price triggers an entry
- Hesitation in exiting when price hits your stop loss
- Doubt about your entry after entering the trade
- Fear of exiting at your stop loss
- Worry about how you will explain another loss to your partner
- Any thought about an early exit of this trade, just to make up for earlier losses
There's a whole lot more, but hopefully you get the point.
One flaw in many trading plans is the absence of a valid strategy for managing these risks. So, let's fix that situation.
The problem is, traders have no guidelines as to:
- When the risk justifies us stopping our trading,
- When to just pause trading and manage the issue, or
- When to ignore it and continue trading.
The way I do this is using a very simple risk management strategy developed by Shell, a global group of energy and petrochemical companies. Obviously they didn't create it for use in trading – I just find that it works really well in this environment. (Yes, I know what you're thinking - I am a risk management nerd!)
What we need to do is firstly classify your current trading as being in a GREEN, AMBER or RED condition. Think of a set of traffic lights. GREEN indicates that everything is fine. This is the desired trading environment. RED is a compulsory STOP condition. And AMBER is a warning that you need to be prepared to stop.
What I'd like you to consider is documenting any RED conditions within your trading plan. This might include things like:
- An unreliable internet connection
- Your charting platform losing it's signal (when you have no alternative)
- Fatigue due to less than six hours sleep the night before, or more than four consecutive nights with less than eight hours sleep (customise this for your own requirements)
These are mandatory STOP trading criteria. Alongside each of these risks you need to define the actions you will take. For example, how will you manage your charting platform going down? If you're a long term trader this might not cause too much stress and may actually be an AMBER rather than RED – your stops may be in the market and you probably have alternative charting options. However if you're a day-trader operating on small timeframes, this is clearly a RED criteria. You may choose to manage this by contacting your broker by phone and closing out all positions.
So, for each risk we define as a RED, we simply document a procedure to manage that situation. And when one of these conditions emerges while trading, we carry out our procedure, and then stop trading until the condition has gone.
Now, everything else that is not as serious as a RED, but can still influence our trading, is an AMBER. The problem here is, as mentioned before, when does it justify stopping, or when should we just continue with our trading?
The Rule of Three risk management strategy simply states that if you get three or more AMBER conditions then that is also an automatic stop. At that point you can either quit for the day and head for the golf course, or manage your AMBERs back to GREEN and resume trading.
So, if your baby is teething, and just won't stop crying despite your partners attempts to comfort her, and you just suffered your second loss in a row, and you now find yourself hesitating at an entry trigger – that's three AMBERs.
STOP TRADING!
Before you continue, make sure you manage your risk back into GREEN, or at least less than three AMBERs. Perhaps take a short break to review your two losses and confirm that the setups were valid, review your trading statistics to confirm that two losses in a row is a normal occurrence, and conduct a short relaxation and visualization session. If you're braver than I am you might also ask your partner to take the baby out for a drive (ask nicely though!)
If you're satisfied that you've now managed the situation back to less than three AMBERs, or ideally completely back to GREEN, then you're right to start trading again. Otherwise, take the day off. Sometimes a ‘three AMBER' complete break from trading is a wise move.
While we all hope that our trading will occur within a completely GREEN environment, life's just not like that. The Rule of Three risk management strategy gives you a simple guideline for when enough is enough – and you need to either stop completely, or reduce some of the external or internal risks. Try it, and see if it helps in your trading as much as it does in mine.
It's simple:
- GREEN is GO,
- AMBER is CAUTION and
- RED is STOP, but
- 3 AMBERs are equivalent to a RED. Stop trading, or manage those AMBERs back to GREEN.
Happy (hopefully GREEN) trading,
Lance Beggs
© Copyright 2008. Lance Beggs. All Rights Reserved.
"I adopted this approach in the beginning, but got stopped out of the market so many times I started to widen them. I've had on too many occasions the market pull back on my stops only to find that it went on to do what I thought it would. Meaning, I lost out again on a good trade. However, I do admit the financial risk is higher. But expecting the market to move fast every time in your desired direction is a lot to ask."
This is a common observation. There's nothing more frustrating than being stopped out and then watching the trade move on to your target without you.
There's actually no right or wrong answer with regards stop placement, only what makes you money and what doesn't. So if wider stops provide a greater edge for your trading, then that's absolutely the right thing for you to do.
For me though, wider stops just don't fit with my trading style, risk tolerance or psychology.
In any case, I thought it might be beneficial for some traders to hear a little about what tight stops mean to me.
It is my belief that regardless of whether a trader uses a tight stop or a wide stop, it should be in exactly the same place.
Having tight stops doesn't mean finding an entry and then placing a stop loss a small fixed distance away and just hoping it isn't hit. Regardless of whether a trader's intention is to operate with a tight or wide stop, the stop loss should be placed in a position which invalidates the setup.
If my stop is hit then it means that either something has changed in the market, or my setup was invalid. Either way, I shouldn't be in the trade.
So for me, the stop should be in the same place, regardless of how large my risk. That place is where I have proof that my setup no longer provides an edge in the market.
The low risk (tight stop) comes NOT from positioning the stop close to the entry, but rather from positioning the entry close to the stop.
For example, if my intention is to enter LONG on a retracement to an area of support, my stop loss will be below the swing low which forms at support. Then, I'll aim to enter as close to that support as possible. This is how I get tight stops.
In some ways this is opposite to most traders. They'll find an entry and then work out the stop loss position. I'll be different in that I know where the stop is, and then work out the entry. And if I can't get an entry that allows sufficiently small risk, I'll just pass on that trade.
Oh, and one other important point - lower risk comes also from incorporating a time stop. If the trade doesn't go my way within a reasonable amount of time, then I'm outa there. I recommend reviewing your trades and gaining an understanding of how quickly your setups should be moving into profitability. Then if that time period passes and you're still stuck in the vicinity of the entry, or in a drawdown, then maybe your setup has lost its edge. Maybe it's time to stand aside and look for the next opportunity in the markets.
Happy trading,
Lance Beggs
(c) Copyright 2008. Lance Beggs. All Rights Reserved.