More traders blow their accounts from poor risk management than from bad signal selection. You can have a 60% win rate and still lose everything if your losses are too large. Risk management is not exciting — but it is the single most important skill in trading.
The 1% Rule
Never risk more than 1% of your trading account on any single trade. On a £10,000 account, that is £100 maximum risk per trade. On a £50,000 prop firm account, that is £500.
The 1% rule means you can lose 20 trades in a row and still have 80% of your account. Most traders risk 5-10% per trade and can be wiped out in 10-15 consecutive losses — which happens to everyone eventually.
Start at 0.5% risk per trade while you are learning. Move to 1% once you have a 3-month positive track record. Never exceed 2% on any trade regardless of how confident you are.
Position Sizing
Position sizing is how you translate your risk percentage into an actual lot size. The formula is:
Lot size = (Account balance × Risk %) ÷ (Stop loss in pips × Pip value)
Example: £10,000 account, 1% risk (£100), 50-pip stop on EUR/USD (pip value ≈ £10 per standard lot per pip):
Lot size = £100 ÷ (50 × £10) = £100 ÷ £500 = 0.2 lots
This is calculated automatically in Arcis AI based on your demo account balance and the signal's stop loss distance.
Daily Loss Limits
Set a maximum daily loss — typically 3-5% — and stop trading for the day if you hit it. This is not weakness, it is professionalism. Your worst days will come in clusters. If you lose 3% in the morning, your judgement is compromised. Stopping prevents a 3% loss becoming a 10% loss.
Prop firms enforce this rule strictly. The FTMO 5% daily loss limit exists because they know the psychology of revenge trading.
Maximum Drawdown Rules
Drawdown is the decline from your account's peak to its current value. A 20% drawdown requires a 25% gain just to get back to breakeven. A 50% drawdown requires a 100% gain. The math gets brutal very quickly.
- 10% drawdown — review your strategy, reduce position sizes by 50%
- 15% drawdown — stop live trading, go back to demo for 2 weeks
- 20% drawdown — full strategy review required before returning
Correlation Risk
Many traders do not realise they are taking the same trade multiple times. EUR/USD and GBP/USD are highly correlated — if you are long both, you effectively have double the risk on USD weakness. Pairs involving the same currency should be treated as one combined position for risk purposes.
The Danger of Moving Stop Losses
Never move your stop loss further away from your entry once a trade is open. This is the single most common account-blowing mistake in retail trading. The stop was placed based on analysis — moving it is based on emotion. The market does not know where your stop is. Move it if you are taking profits (trail it), never if you are avoiding a loss.
The only time to move a stop loss is to breakeven after TP1 hits, or to trail it to lock in profits as TP2 approaches. Moving it away from your entry to avoid a loss is gambling.
Risk management built into every signal
Every Arcis AI signal includes a structure-based stop loss and recommended 0.5% risk per trade. The demo account enforces a 5% drawdown limit automatically.
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