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Randy McKay -- There are few futures traders who have gone from a starting account of several thousand dollars to double-digit million-dollar gains. Those who have kept their winnings are even fewer. The start of McKay's trading career coincided with the birth of currency futures trading. Over his entire trading career, McKay has been profitable for his own account in eighteen out of twenty years. A conservative estimate would place his cumulative earnings in the tens of millions. (Source New Market Wizard)
When I get hurt in the market, I get the hell out. It doesn't matter at all where the market is trading. I just get out, because I believe that once you're hurt in the market, your decisions are going to be far less objective than they are when you're doing well. And if the market had rallied 1,800 points that day to close higher, I couldn't have cared less. If you stick around when the market is severely against you, sooner or later they're going to carry you out.
My first significant loss, I was short the Deutsche Mark when the market went limit-up. I could still have gotten out limit-up, but I didn't. The next day, the market went limit-up again. I ended up not only doubling my loss, but it also took me two months to recover to my account size before that trade. I basically learned that you must get out of your losses immediately. It's not merely a matter of how much you can afford to risk on a given trade, but you also have to consider how many potential future winners you might miss because of the effect of the larger loss on your mental attitude and trading size.
The most important advice is to never let a loser get out of hand. You want to be sure that you can be wrong twenty or thirty times in a row and still have money in your account. When I trade, I'll risk perhaps 5 to 10 percent of the money in my account. If I lose on that trade, no matter how strongly I feel, on my next trade I'll risk no more than about 4 percent of my account. If I lose again, I'll drop the trading size down to about 2 percent. I'll keep on reducing my trading size as long as I'm losing. I've gone from trading as many as three thousand contracts per trade to as few as ten when I was cold, and then back again.
When you're trading well, you have a better mental attitude. When you're trading poorly, you start wishing and hoping. Instead of getting into trades you think will work, you end up getting into trades you hope will work.
My first significant loss, I was short the Deutsche Mark when the market went limit-up. I could still have gotten out limit-up, but I didn't. The next day, the market went limit-up again. I ended up not only doubling my loss, but it also took me two months to recover to my account size before that trade. I basically learned that you must get out of your losses immediately. It's not merely a matter of how much you can afford to risk on a given trade, but you also have to consider how many potential future winners you might miss because of the effect of the larger loss on your mental attitude and trading size.
The most important advice is to never let a loser get out of hand. You want to be sure that you can be wrong twenty or thirty times in a row and still have money in your account. When I trade, I'll risk perhaps 5 to 10 percent of the money in my account. If I lose on that trade, no matter how strongly I feel, on my next trade I'll risk no more than about 4 percent of my account. If I lose again, I'll drop the trading size down to about 2 percent. I'll keep on reducing my trading size as long as I'm losing. I've gone from trading as many as three thousand contracts per trade to as few as ten when I was cold, and then back again.
When you're trading well, you have a better mental attitude. When you're trading poorly, you start wishing and hoping. Instead of getting into trades you think will work, you end up getting into trades you hope will work.