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If your seeing wild fluctuations in your trading portfolio, and not of the upwards kind, then your forgetting a critical piece of knowledge. To be a successful trader, you MUST cut your losses short, and let your profits run. It is THE most important lesson to learn, right up there with using a stop loss, and key concepts like support and resistance. To be a highly successful trader, you need to learn to pyramid your profits, greatly amplifying your gains, and turning the big winners, into true home runs.
In order to properly pyramid your profits, you must understand a basic tenant of risk management. This tenant alone is enough to bring many an unprofitable trader to profitability, but only once combined with the idea of pyramiding profits, can its true utility be realized. This tenant states that no more then 5% of your portfolio should be at risk during any trade. Thus someone with a $50000 portfolio can risk $2500 on a trade. This doesnt mean they cant invest more then $2500, but it means that when setting a stop loss, your initial position size should be based on the $2500 number.
So if a company is trading at $20 per share, and our stop loss is at $17.50, we can lose $2.50 per share by buying. If were willing to lose no more then $2500, then $2500/$2.50 = 1000 shares. So we should purchase 1000 shares for this trade.
Now here is where the idea of pyramiding your profits comes in. If you think that $20 stock is going to $25, then with your 1000 shares, there's a potential for $5000 in profits. Not bad at all, but that number could be much higher. After that $20 stock goes up to $22.5, you move your stop loss up higher, possibly to around $21.00. Now you've locked in gains of $1000, and you can add that to your risk amount of $2500 for this trade. You now have $3500 to risk on this trade. Since you can lose $1.50 a share from where you currently are, $3500/1.50= 2334. This means you should increase your position by another 2300 shares.
So to recap. Stop loss at 21, we bought 1000 shares at 20, and 2300 at 22.50. If it goes down to 21, we gain 1000 on the first 1000 shares, and lose 3450 on the batch of 2300 shares, for a total loss of $2500 " the original risk amount. However, if it goes up to 25 as we originally forecast as our profit target, we've made $5000 on the original 1000 shares, and another $5750 on the second batch of 2300 shares. This is a total gain of 10750, while never risking more then $2500 in capital. The same idea can be applied to shorting as well. Its all about doing more of whats working, and less of what isn't.
This strategy is useful both for long term investors, and for shorter term traders. Long term investors can use this to scale into upwards trending stocks to safely generate massive profits, while shorter term investors can use this strategy to minimize risk, while maximizing their overall gains.
You may have heard the saying, you never go broke taking a profit. This idea is the polar opposite to pyramiding your profits, and is in fact, dangerous. To succeed in the investing world, your profits must be substantially higher then your losses, and that is whats accomplished by a trading strategy such as pyramiding your profits. Cut your losses short, and let your profits run.
The key to success in trading is to have big gains, and small losses. By doing so, you can be wrong half the time, and still make money in the market. By pyramiding your profits, you insure big gains and small losses. Using this stock trading strategy, you can truly cut your losses short, and let your profits run.
In order to properly pyramid your profits, you must understand a basic tenant of risk management. This tenant alone is enough to bring many an unprofitable trader to profitability, but only once combined with the idea of pyramiding profits, can its true utility be realized. This tenant states that no more then 5% of your portfolio should be at risk during any trade. Thus someone with a $50000 portfolio can risk $2500 on a trade. This doesnt mean they cant invest more then $2500, but it means that when setting a stop loss, your initial position size should be based on the $2500 number.
So if a company is trading at $20 per share, and our stop loss is at $17.50, we can lose $2.50 per share by buying. If were willing to lose no more then $2500, then $2500/$2.50 = 1000 shares. So we should purchase 1000 shares for this trade.
Now here is where the idea of pyramiding your profits comes in. If you think that $20 stock is going to $25, then with your 1000 shares, there's a potential for $5000 in profits. Not bad at all, but that number could be much higher. After that $20 stock goes up to $22.5, you move your stop loss up higher, possibly to around $21.00. Now you've locked in gains of $1000, and you can add that to your risk amount of $2500 for this trade. You now have $3500 to risk on this trade. Since you can lose $1.50 a share from where you currently are, $3500/1.50= 2334. This means you should increase your position by another 2300 shares.
So to recap. Stop loss at 21, we bought 1000 shares at 20, and 2300 at 22.50. If it goes down to 21, we gain 1000 on the first 1000 shares, and lose 3450 on the batch of 2300 shares, for a total loss of $2500 " the original risk amount. However, if it goes up to 25 as we originally forecast as our profit target, we've made $5000 on the original 1000 shares, and another $5750 on the second batch of 2300 shares. This is a total gain of 10750, while never risking more then $2500 in capital. The same idea can be applied to shorting as well. Its all about doing more of whats working, and less of what isn't.
This strategy is useful both for long term investors, and for shorter term traders. Long term investors can use this to scale into upwards trending stocks to safely generate massive profits, while shorter term investors can use this strategy to minimize risk, while maximizing their overall gains.
You may have heard the saying, you never go broke taking a profit. This idea is the polar opposite to pyramiding your profits, and is in fact, dangerous. To succeed in the investing world, your profits must be substantially higher then your losses, and that is whats accomplished by a trading strategy such as pyramiding your profits. Cut your losses short, and let your profits run.
The key to success in trading is to have big gains, and small losses. By doing so, you can be wrong half the time, and still make money in the market. By pyramiding your profits, you insure big gains and small losses. Using this stock trading strategy, you can truly cut your losses short, and let your profits run.
About the Author:
Don't even CONSIDER trading another stock before checking out Jordan's website on Stock Trading Stategies. Learn about Stock Option Stategies, ETFs, shorting and more by visiting the Stock and Options Guru! If you want to make money trading stocks, you need to have access to this information!
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