Day Trading: Living On The Edge?
There is a general perception that day trading futures contracts is a highly risky business and not for the faint of heart
. Day trading can be a very risky business, especially when traders use poor money management techniques, faulty trading technique, and improper risk assessment for trades. For the uninitiated, day trading is a great way to lose a nice chunk of money.It doesn't have to be that way, though. Far too many traders charge into the markets and improperly prepared for the challenges they will face. It's easy to understand why. A casual examination of a future chart shows a serpentine pattern, up and down, that ought to be fairly simple to trade. There is also a tendency to assume that the serpentine patterns follow some sort of organized pattern. Figure out the pattern, and you ought to make money.
Wrong!
Study after study has shown there is a high component of randomness to futures trading charts. I do think there are some identifiable patterns buried in the random patterns, but they are not as obvious as one might think. No, learning to trade is far more than a perfunctory glance at a chart and placing trades when you think the market is moving one way or the other.
The very essence of trading is containment of risk. There are many components traders utilize to minimize risk, and most center on the concept of probability. The idea is to take high probability trades, and pass on low probability trades. Through training and experience traders learn the characteristics of high probability trades as well as the characteristics of low probability trades. Further, careful management of your futures trading account is essential. In order to minimize risk, a trader should never trade more than 8 to 10% of his account on any given trade.
But there is even more. I get ample opportunities to watch traders practicing and am amazed at how many traders enter trades without stops. It is essential to determine your level of risk on a given trade and set an appropriate stop loss order to assure you do not lose an excessive amount of money on a trade gone badly. In my opinion, this is the most frequently violated risk management tool. Frankly, it baffles me.
Day trading is far from living on the edge. The goal of the day trader is to both profit and minimize risk. Obviously more risk increases the likelihood of losing trades, and losing trades are not what traders want. For that reason we employ a variety of risk reduction procedures to increase our likelihood of success.
The more adept a trader adapts risk management techniques, the more prosperous he will be in the long run. Risk containment should be the primary goal of every trader, and lack of proper risk containment is the number one cause of trader failure. While it is very romantic to think of day trading in the same light as being a gunslinger, just the opposite is true. A good trader avoids confrontation with excessive risk and cowers against low probability trades.
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