Thursday, July 8, 2010

8 . OVERTRADING YOUR ACCOUNT

Assuming risk that is too large a percentage of your account balance on any single trade, either with too large a dollar
risk per contract or by trading too many contracts for any single trade or by trading too many currency pairs.This can also happen after a period of choppy market consolidation

when you “know” that the market is going to do something. You are so certain that this is going to be a big
move that you risk much more than the maximum 8% of your account balance. Already emotionally out of balance,
all it takes is a couple of limit moves against you and you
are bust.

To prevent this mistake from occurring, you must have a hard and fast rule that you can risk no more than a certain
percentage of your account balance on any trade regardless of how good the trade looks. My personal hard and fast
rule is to only have one position on at a time period. This does not count if I am hedged because with most brokers
hedging does not take up margin. This limits any possible overtrading. Overtrading is the quickest way to lose the
capital in your account.

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