What Is Position Sizing & How Do You Use It to Manage Risk?

No matter what kind of trading you may dabble in, there will always be some sort of risk to it. This risk increases when you’re trading highly volatile assets such as crypto. As such, many traders tend to employ crypto risk management strategies to ensure that any losses remain low. One of the most common crypto risk management strategies is position sizing. Read on to find out more about what position sizing entails, and how you can use it to manage risk.

Key Takeaways:

• Position sizing is a trading strategy in which the trader defines their entry price, exit price and overall risk before trading.
• If done correctly, position sizing can effectively help traders preserve their trading capital and ensure that they don’t blow out their account after a single trade.

What Is Position Sizing?

Position sizing is the process by which a trader defines contract size, trade size and other risk criteria prior to getting into the market.

How Does Position Sizing Work?

Position sizing is essentially a trading strategy by which you define your entry price, exit price and overall risk prior to making a trade. For instance, you may decide that you’re only going to enter the market after it breaches the day’s high, the week’s low or some other objective level.

The next step in the position sizing process is to determine what size you want to put on a trade. If you have a smaller account, you'll likely want to trade a mini or micro lot as opposed to a standard lot. Furthermore, you'll likely want to trade a single lot at a time or use a tight stop-loss to better preserve your trading capital.

When done properly, position sizing can help to preserve your trading capital and ensure that you don't blow out your account after a single trade. There are many different types of position sizing strategies, such as fixed-dollar amount, percentage dollar amount and contract size value. You may also use mathematical formulas, such as the Kelly Criterion, to calculate position size or otherwise help you determine your optimal position.

Why Is Position Sizing Important for Crypto Traders?

Proper position sizing is important for crypto traders because crypto markets are some of the most volatile you'll encounter. It isn't uncommon for the price of Bitcoin to change by thousands of dollars in a single day. Therefore, it's important to have rules in place to ensure that your position size is in line with your account size, risk tolerance and trading goals.

Benefits of Position Sizing

Remove Emotion From Your Trading

You have almost no control over when or how fast the markets will move. Of course, market makers know this, and will use it to their advantage. It's not uncommon to see markets held in a tight trading range for several hours or days before a parabolic move to a new high or low.

It's also not uncommon to see markets trend in one direction for hours or days in a row before suddenly reversing to where a breakout started. The use of proper position sizing strategies can help you avoid the temptation to chase moves. Instead, you only enter or exit the market when it makes sense for you to do so, which can help to keep your trading account at a healthy level.

Learn from Each Trade

Even if you stick to proper position sizing best practices, there’s no guarantee that any single trade is going to be profitable. However, if you have a clearly defined plan, you can review it to see why a trade wasn't successful. For example, maybe you weren't using the correct position size, or went over your account risk limit because you made an error when calculating your position size.

Of course, it's also possible that you got out of the market too early (or stayed in too long) because you let emotion take over. Regardless of why a trade didn't work, the fact that you have objective and defined rules means that you’ll likely be able to determine what went wrong, and what you need to avoid in the future.

In addition, you’ll want to review your winning trades to determine if there was anything that you did wrong in regard to position sizing, or other aspects of your trade that you could execute better next time. For example, maybe you stayed in the market even after hitting your profit target because you were feeling good, and wanted to squeeze more out of the market. Although you may have been successful today, it's more important to develop good habits that will allow you to preserve and grow your trading capital and account over the long term.

Risks of Position Sizing

Position Sizing Isn't a Holy Grail

While position sizing can be an effective way to minimize risk, it is not foolproof. For example, if market makers decide to gap the market before or during a news release, your stop-loss may be exceeded, which means that you would exceed your maximum risk on a trade.

You may also be triggered into a trade if a market maker widens its spread. In such a scenario, a limit order to buy might be initiated even if the market doesn't hit your preferred entry price.

Alternatively, a limit sell order might be initiated even if the market doesn't fall to your defined entry price. [A limit order, in which you determine where you want to enter the market, is generally good until you cancel it or until the end of a trading day.]

You Might Not Trade Your Plan Properly

Even if you trade your plan properly, there’s no guarantee that your trading strategy will work. However, you’re almost guaranteed to fail if you don't follow your position sizing rules, or don't follow them consistently. It's not uncommon for new traders to get into trouble if they try to trade when they're tired, angry or experiencing other negative emotions. It may also be more challenging to trade properly when you're stressed or otherwise unable to focus.

How to Use Position Size to Manage Risk

Position sizing techniques can help to ensure that every trade you make is a meaningful one. Let's take a closer look at how you can use position sizing as it relates to the size of your account, as well as to that of any trade you want to make.

Account Risk

Most professional traders limit their risk to no more than 1% of their overall account balance per trade. Therefore, if you have $1,000 in your account, you wouldn't want to risk more than $10 at any given time. Although it may be frustrating to have such a low maximum risk when you start out, your goal as a beginner isn't necessarily to make money. Instead, your goal is to get better at managing your emotions, learning from your mistakes and developing good position sizing habits in a relatively stress-free way.

Trade Risk

Let's say that your maximum risk for a single trade is $10, and that each price interest point (pip) is worth $1. In this scenario, you’d want to put a stop-loss order no more than 10 pips below your entry price if you’re looking to buy, and no more than 10 pips above your entry price if you’re looking to sell.

Proper Position Size

This position sizing method helps you determine how many lots you want to control in any given trade. Generally speaking, the number of lots that you purchase depends on your confidence in your trade. It also depends on the size of the lot that you’re purchasing. Typically, a micro lot allows you to control $1,000 of an underlying asset and a mini lot allows you to control $10,000 of an underlying asset, while a standard lot is $100,000 of an underlying asset.

Fixed Dollar Value

The fixed dollar amount method is one of the easier position sizing techniques for new traders to understand and master. This is because you simply choose a dollar amount that you’re content with risking (and potentially losing) in a given trade. The amount that you’re willing to risk then determines your position size, stop-loss, and other trade entry and exit criteria. For example, if you wanted to risk $100 on a trade where each pip is worth $5, your maximum stop-loss would be 20 pips from your entry.

Fixed Percentage Risk per Trade

Ideally, your account risk limit and risk per trade will be roughly the same. This can help to preserve trade capital and ensure that you're being consistent with each trade you make. In most cases, this means that you won't risk more than 1% of your capital on any given trade. However, you can adjust your position sizing per trade (up or down) as you see fit.

Contract Size Value

Contract size value position sizing allows you to control your risk because smaller contracts have smaller pip values. For example, a micro lot can have a pip value of as little as 10 cents. This means that for every pip the market moves, you'll only risk a dime. A mini lot typically costs $1 per pip, while a standard lot typically comes with a risk of $10 per pip. Of course, you'll want to check with your broker regarding pip values before using contract size as a position-sizing tool.

Kelly Criterion

The Kelly Criterion is a mathematical formula that uses past results in an effort to calculate the correct position size for future trades. 

The formula is as follows: Kelly % = W − [(1 − W) / R], where W equals your winning probability and R indicates your profit/loss ratio. 

The result of this optimal position calculation will be somewhere between 0 and 1, where 0 represents an optimal position of 0% and 1 equals an optimal position of 100%.

For instance, if you get a result of 0.05, then you’ll want to allocate 5% of your account toward your cryptocurrency of choice. Of course, never breach your account risk, trade risk or other position sizing rules simply because a calculator told you to.

Is Position Sizing an Effective Crypto Risk Management Strategy?

Position sizing is generally an effective crypto risk management strategy. When used properly, position sizing can provide you with an objective method of determining your entry and exit criteria, helping you to filter out the noise and avoid being manipulated by market makers. Having an objective trade plan also means that you're rarely risking more than you can afford to lose, based on your account size.

The Bottom Line

Position sizing should be considered an integral part of your overall trading strategy. When used consistently, position sizing may help to prevent catastrophic losses that might exceed your initial investment. It can also help you manage your emotions, which can be especially difficult for new traders.

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