03 · Level 3Position size, drawdown, margin calls, and the habits that empty an account faster than any bad entry. Twelve lessons.
Risk and the mind: how accounts survive
- Level 1
3.1 Risk per trade: the 1-2% rule
Deciding the money you can lose on one trade before deciding anything else. Everything downstream — size, stop, target — follows from that number.
- Level 2
3.2 Working out position size
Risk in money, divided by the stop distance in pips, divided by pip value. Three numbers you already have, in that order.
- Level 3
3.3 Risk and reward
What the ratio between stop and target does to the hit rate you need. The arithmetic is fixed; the ratio you can actually get is not.
- Level 4
3.4 Drawdown and losing streaks
How far an account falls from its peak, and why a run of losses is normal rather than evidence that something broke.
- Level 5
3.5 Margin call and stop out
The two thresholds at which a broker warns you and then closes your positions, and the numbers that bring an account to them.
- Level 6
3.6 Fear, greed and FOMO
The three states in which traders break their own rules, and what each one feels like from the inside while it happens.
- Level 7
3.7 Overtrading and chasing losses
Two patterns that turn one bad trade into a bad week: trading more often than the plan allows, and raising size to win it back.
- Level 8
3.8 Discipline: the rules you do not break
A short written routine before, during and after the session — the part of trading that is the same every day.
- Level 9
3.9 Signals, robots and copy trading
Three ways to hand decisions to someone else, what each one actually copies, and what stays your risk regardless.
- Level 10
3.10 Checking a broker in the local register
Where the register is, what to type into it, and which answers mean the licence does not cover what you were offered.
- Level 11
3.11 Tax on trading in your country
Which authority wants to hear about trading results, what kind of income they are treated as, and what records to keep from the start.
- Level 12
3.12 Taking your money out
The route a withdrawal takes, how long each step holds it, and the checks that stop one.