We all know the saying, "No risk, no reward." In markets especially, we cannot make money if we're not willing to take risks. However, my experience is that the greatest problem is not with taking risk, but with the intelligence of risk taking. Traders take risks that, ultimately, they are not emotionally prepared to handle.
Risk taking becomes unintelligent when the amount of risk we take is ultimately more than we can handle, either emotionally or business-wise. The trader who routinely gets stopped out of good ideas, ones that often work out in the end is trading more size and taking more risk than they can handle, given the market's signal to noise ratio.
We cannot control markets, but we can control the risks we take. When we size positions larger than we can ultimately tolerate given market noise, we give up our control and that surrenders any edge we may have possessed.
Risk taking becomes unintelligent when the amount of risk we take is ultimately more than we can handle, either emotionally or business-wise. The trader who routinely gets stopped out of good ideas, ones that often work out in the end is trading more size and taking more risk than they can handle, given the market's signal to noise ratio.
We cannot control markets, but we can control the risks we take. When we size positions larger than we can ultimately tolerate given market noise, we give up our control and that surrenders any edge we may have possessed.
