Controlling Risk

Controlling risk is one of the most important ingredients of successful trading. While it is emotionally more appealing to focus on the upside of trading, every trader should know precisely how much he is willing to lose on each trade before cutting losses, and how much he is willing to lose in his account before ceasing trading and re-evaluating.

Risk will essentially be controlled in two ways: 1) by exiting losing trades before losses exceed your pre-determined maximum tolerance (or "cutting losses"), and 2) by limiting the "leverage" or position size you trade for a given account size.


Cutting Losses

Too often, the beginning trader will be overly concerned about incurring losing trades. He therefore lets losses mount, with the "hope" that the market will turn around and the loss will turn into a gain.

Almost all successful trading strategies include a disciplined procedure for cutting losses. When a trader is down on a positions, many emotions often come into play, making it difficult to cut losses at the right level. The best practice is to decide where losses will be cut before a trade is even initiated. This will assure the trader of the maximum amount he can expect to lose on the trade.

The other key element of risk control is overall account risk. In other words, a trader should know before he begins his trading endeavor how much of his account he is willing to lose before ceasing trading and re-evaluating his strategy. If you open an account with $2,000, are you willing to lose all $2,000? $1,000? As with risk control on individual trades, the most important discipline is to decide on a level and stick with it. Further information on the mechanics of limiting risk can be found at the Exiting Trades pages and Hedging pages.


Determining Position Size

Before beginning any trading program, an assessment should be made of the maximum account loss that is likely to occur over time, per lot (see "Drawdown" in "Glossary of Terms"). For example, assume you have determined that your worse case loss on any trade is 30 pips. That translates into approximately $300 per $100,000 position size. Further assume that the $100,000 position size is equal to one lot. Five consecutive losing trades would result in a loss of $1,500 (5 x $300); a difficult period but not to be unexpected over the long run. For a $10,000 account trading one lot, this translates into a 15% loss. Therefore, even though it may be possible to trade 5 lots or more with a $10,000 account, this analysis suggests that the resulting "drawdown" would be too great (75% or more of the account value would be wiped out).

Any trader should have a sense of this maximum loss per lot, and then determine the amount he wishes to trade for a given account size that will yield tolerable drawdowns.

Placing Orders

Trades can be initiated in one of three ways: 1) a Market Order, 2) a Stop, and 3) a Limit.

Market Order. Placing a market order means that you will buy at your brokers current "ask" price, or sell at your brokers current "bid" price, whatever that price currently is. For example, suppose you are buying EURUSD. The current market, as quoted by your broker or on GCI's "Dealing Rates" window, is .9152/56. This means that your broker is willing to buy EURUSD from you at .9152, and sell it to you at .9156. To place a market order to buy

Click on the rate (Sell or Buy) field within the order record or right click anywhere within the order record and then choose Market order command from pop-up menu. The Amount input screen will appear:



Enter desired amount measured in lots and press OK. New order marked with letter ‘I’ (Initiate) will appear on the Trader’s Orders window. Dealer now is able to confirm operation or to reject it due to market movement.


Stop Order. Initiating a trade with a stop order means that you will only have a position if the market moves in the direction you are anticipating. For example, if USDJPY is currently 128.50 and you believe it will move higher, you could place a "buy stop" at 128.60. This means that the order will only be filled if the market moves up to 128.60. The advantage is that if you are wrong and the market moves straight down, you will not have bought (because 128.60 will never have been reached). The disadvantage is that 128.60 is clearly a less attractive rate at which to buy than 128.50. Initiating a trade with a Stop order is usually appropriate if you wish to trade only with strong market momentum in a particular direction.

On the GCI system, you can enter a trade with a stop order by right-clicking on the appropriate currency rate in the "Dealing Rates" window, and then selecting "Entry Stop" from the pop up menu. You can then input the order size and price.


Limit Order. A Limit order is an order to buy below the current price, or sell above the current price. For example, if EURUSD is trading at .9152/56 and you believe the market will rise, you could place a limit order to buy at .9145. If filled, this will give you a long position in EURUSD at .9145, which is 11 pips better than if you had just bought EURUSD with a market order. The disadvantage of this Limit order is that if EURUSD moves straight up from .9152/56, your limit at .9145 will never be filled and you will miss out on the profit opportunity even though your view on the direction of EURUSD was correct. Entering a trade with a Limit order is usually appropriate if you believe that the market will remain in a range before moving in your anticipated direction, allowing the order to be filled first.

On the GCI system, you can enter a trade with a limit order by right-clicking on the appropriate currency rate in the "Dealing Rates" window, and then selecting "Entry Limit" from the pop up menu. You can then input the order size and price.

Calculate Pip Values

A "pip" is the smallest increment in any currency pair. In EURUSD, a movement from .8941 to .8942 is one pip, so a pip is .0001. In USDJPY, a movement from 130.45 to 130.46 is one pip, so a pip is .01. How much in dollars is this movement worth, for example, per 10,000 Euros in EURUSD? How much is one pip worth per 10,000 Dollars in USDJPY? We will refer to the size, in this case 10,000 units of the base currency, as the "Notional Amount". The formula for calculating a pip value is therefore:

(one pip, with proper decimal placement/currency exchange rate) x (Notional Amount)

Using USDJPY as an example, this yields:

(.01/130.46) x USD10,000 = $0.77

or 77 cents per pip

Using EURUSD as an example, we have:

(.0001/.8942) x EUR10,000 = EUR 1.1183

But we want the pip value in USD, so we then must multiply EUR1.1183 x (EURUSD exchange rate):

EUR 1.1183 x .8942 = $1.00

This is in fact a phenomenon you will see with any currency in which the currency is quoted first (such as EURUSD, GBPUSP, or AUDUSD): the pip value is always $1.00 per 10,000 currency units. This is why pip (or "tick") values in currency futures, where the currency is quoted first, are always fixed.

Approximate pip values for the major currencies are as follows, per 10,000 units of the base currency:

USD/JPY: 1 pip = $.77; In other words a change from 130.45 to 130.46 is worth about $.77 per $10,000.

EUR/USD: 1 pip = $1.00; .8941 to .8942 is worth $1.00 per 10,000 Euros.

GBP/USD: 1 pip = $1.00; 1.4765 to 1.4766 is worth $1.00 per 10,000 Pounds.

USD/CHF: 1 pip = $.59; 1.6855 to 1.6866 is worth $.59 per $10,000.

Overnight Interest

Every currency and commodity has a "cost of carry" associated with holding the position for more than one day. In currencies, this cost is a function of the "interest rate differential" of the two currencies that comprise the exchange rate.

For example, in USDJPY, the interest rate differential is the difference between short-term U.S. interest rates and short-term Japanese interest rates. If, for example, U.S. interest rates are 5.0% and Japanese interest rates are 1.0%, the interest rate differential is 4.0% (5.0% - 1.0%). This means that if a trader was to sell USDJPY, he would have to pay 4.0% of the notional amount of the contract per year to hold the position. On one lot, the notional amount is $100,000, so the trader would have to pay approximately $4,000 to hold the position for one year. This translates to approximately $11.00 per day per lot for holding the USDJPY position ($4,000/365).

On the GCI system, these amounts are calculated for the trader and shown, as dollars per lot per day, in the "Currency Reference Rates" window under the columns "Prm Buy" and "Prm Sell":