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Money Management - Part Two

Here are the steps to build your own system:

Designing a High Reward-Risk System for Managing Money

Expectancy = (Probability of Winning * Average Win) Minus (Probability of Losing * Average Loss)

Ensure Reward to Risk Ratio is above 2. That means Average Loss should be small and Average Wins should be big. Set stops that will be reasonably small. Do not enter trade is the stops has to be too large for comfort.

Use systems to spot opportunities that will provide better probability of winning.

NOTE: It is extremely dangerous if you are not adequately capitalized. Many traders failed due to excessive draw downs. By simple probability, the bigger player always wins against the smaller player.

Technique I -Get Best Reward-to-Risk Ratio and then Leverage Yourself
Have a system that can spot good opportunities. Not quite duplicable. It involve good return with small draw downs. 5-1 is not quite achievable. 2-1 is generally possible and good enough. Above that would be great.

Technique 2 -Optimal f and the Kelly Criterion
Ralph Vince’s solution to optimal money management is to risk an “optimal fixed fraction” or f of one’s largest “historical draw down.”

“For any given independent trial situation, which you have an edge (i.e., a positive mathematical expectation), there exists an optimal fixed fraction (fj between 0 and 1 as a divisor of your biggest loss to bet on each and every event to maximize your winnings. Most people think that the optimal fixed fraction is the percentage of your total stake to bet. This is absolutely false. optimal f is the divisor of our biggest loss, the result of which we divide by our total stake to know how many bets to make or contracts to have on.” Portfolio Money Management

Since Ralph Vince's formula is too complex, we will use Kelly's criterion:

Kelly % = W - [(1 - W)/R]

W = probability of winning
R = Ratio of Average winning size / Average losing size

Example, W = 0.5 and R =2, Kelly % = 0.25 = 25% return.

IMPORTANT: Even though your probability of winning is 50%, it is entirely possible that you have a continuous 10 losing trades or 20 losing trades.

Technique 3 -Playing the “Market’s Money”

Risk very little of your starting capital but willing to risk your profits. When you face draw downs, you bet size will also go down accordingly. Once you position advances, you risk the more of the money from your profit. Example, you will only risk 1% of your original capital plus 4% of your profits.

Technique 4 -Creative Money Management with the Market’s Money
Another equally profitable money management routine allowing you to build your capital quickly amounts to playing the market’s money through pyramid money management and stop adjustment. This method involves adjusting your stops to match the advancing holdings to maximize your profits. Some contracts will become zero risk when the stop price is higher the purchase price (long position). New contracts can be added.

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