Most accounts are damaged by size, not by being wrong once. A clear risk budget — how much of the account you will allow a single idea to cost — keeps a bad week from becoming an unrecoverable one.
Three controls
- Size first. Decide the loss you can accept, then work backwards to lots or units.
- Place the invalidation. A stop belongs where the idea is wrong, not where it “feels” close.
- Watch correlation. Long EURUSD, long GBPUSD, and short USDJPY can be one dollar view, not three.
Leverage makes these controls more important, not less. A 1:200 account can express a small view with a small deposit, or a large view with the same deposit. The platform will allow both. The plan has to choose.
Review the book at the end of the session: open risk, clustered themes, and whether overnight holding is intentional. That short review is often worth more than another setup.
