Tick Size Sets Your Stop Distance
Stops live on a grid. If your stop is “between ticks,” it gets rounded into a different risk level than you planned.
Risk
Sizing, expectancy, and rules that keep variance from becoming death.
Partial Fills Change Your Risk Math
A partial fill is a new position with a new plan. If you treat it like a “broken” order, you’ll improvise your way into oversized risk.
Market Orders Are Permission Slips
A market order is not “get me in.” It’s “fill me wherever you can.” In thin or fast markets, that’s expensive.
Spreads Widen When Certainty Dies
A tight spread is agreement. Volatility breaks agreement. Treat widening spreads as a risk signal, not bad luck.
If You Can’t Measure Slippage, You Can’t Size
Stops and position size assume fills. Slippage is where the assumptions break.
Exit Liquidity Matters More Than Entry
You can often get in. Getting out at your intended price is the real privilege.
Stops Cluster, Then Get Vacuumed
Most stops sit in the same obvious places. Price doesn’t need malice to find them.
Slippage Is a Regime, Not an Error
Slippage clusters. If you treat it as rare, your risk model is fiction.
Scaling Out Changes Your Strategy, Not Just Your Risk
Scaling out is not a neutral tweak: it rewires your payoff distribution and can quietly remove the winners that make the system work.
If You Can’t Explain the Contract, You Can’t Size It
If you don’t know the pip/tick value and notional exposure, your position size is a guess, and guesses become leverage.
Fixed Profit Targets Destroy the Right Tail
A fixed take-profit is a ceiling on your winners; if you cap the right tail, you must win more often or you will bleed out after costs.
Risk Per Trade Is Not Risk Per Day
If you can lose 1R five times in a session, your real risk is 5R, no matter what your ‘risk per trade’ says.
A Tight Stop Is a Position Size Decision
A tight stop is not safety, it’s either smaller size or more churn, and most people quietly choose churn.
Volatility Changes Your Size, Not Your Conviction
If volatility doubles and you keep the same position size, you doubled your risk whether you admit it or not.
Trailing Stops Often Trail Into Noise
A trailing stop that isn’t anchored to structure will usually trail into normal noise and convert winners into scratches.
You Can Be Right and Still Lose
Correct direction is not profitability if your payoff shape, timing, and costs are wrong.
You’re Short Volatility Without Knowing It
If your strategy collects frequent small wins and fears big moves, you are effectively short volatility, whether you trade options or not.
High Win-rate Strategies Die Quietly
Many high win-rate strategies are just selling tail risk: they look genius until they meet the one loss that matters.
Your Stop Placement Is a Personality Test
Most stops are placed where you emotionally want to be wrong, not where the trade is actually wrong.
Break-even Stops Starve Expectancy
Moving stops to break-even too early converts winners into scratches and quietly destroys expectancy.