And this is what most traders are saying. They are saying that their drawdown tolerance is limited to what they can stomach basically. That may be the best thing because psychological costs are the most expensive to traders.
How much you risk per trade (1%, 2%, 5%) depends upon how you react to risk.
If you feel disconfort when pushing the buy/sell buttons, then you should lower your risk (in your trading plan, then follow the plan), so that you feel comfortable again.
Personally, I would see how often I trade and adjust my rsk % from there. I risk 1% per trade but I trade around 5 trades a day. I also have a strike 3 rule where if I lose money 3 times in a row, I stop trading for the day as the market clearly is nto agreeing with me.
If you trade 1 trade a month, you might want to risk more for such a trade. It also depends on what kind of returns you are looking for. Are you looking at 20% per month of 20% per year? How much R:R you choose depends on that too 
Desmond, bloody fantastic to see you out and about in the community. I know the army takes a lot of your time but it is good to hear from you. Hope you can find time to share more of your knowledge.
All the best bro
Bob
considering you are a losing trader (peeked at your myfxbook link) then there is no risk too small for you.
It wouldnât hurt to drop risk down to 0.25% per trade until you can string together 3 months of profitability. Increase to 0.50% and do another 3 months. Repeat the process until you can do 2%, and by then you should be on track. Not really necessary to exceed 2% because you can already make a lot of money risking that amount.
Yes, that is what I am seeing. There must be some account for the frequency with which a system trades.
Ahh⌠So you agree as well that it would be a good idea to set up a variable fractional position sizing algo rather than simply go out with a fixed fractional position sizing algo. Is that what you do? What exactly is your position sizing scheme?
I think my point was actually that your priorities are quite misguided. Every amount of risk is too high for you because you are a losing trader. You donât make money, you lose it, so the best option would be to lose it slower until you right that trainwreck of yours.
Get it? :35:
So, then the priority would be to lower the risk percentage during drawdown rather than stick to a fixed fractional position size. Right? That is the whole point of this thread. Are you a trader? Do you have a myfxbook?
Yes, cut risk when you are in drawdown. Anything else is suicide. So, you can see that being in drawdown yourself, you should either lower your risk drastically, or bite the bullet and write-off the account as a total failure, and start anew.
Yes Iâm a trader. No, there is no myfxbook, as Iâm not trying to land a job at a prop desk.
There are many out there that would say to keep position sizes going at a fixed fraction. It only occurred to me recently to actually vary that fraction rather than go fixed (before I was thinking about simply finding the right percentage). But there is of course a danger of prolonging a drawdown if one wins with smaller percentages because they have reduced them. The algo has to make sense.
What method do YOU use? And how has it worked out? How do you minimize drawdown without prolonging it?
You should try myfxbook, I love how it tracks my activity automatically. There is a snag with it though, I now keep cash in different accounts that it canât track so the percentages will be incorrect. So it is only a partial help.
I wouldnât write an account off only to start a new one because that would simply distort the view of the big picture. Better to simply trade the same account out of drawdown, doing so in a different account would not accomplish anything but make it look like you werenât in a drawdown when you actually were.
I guess what I should ask you is: How did you arrive at those numbers: 0.25% for 3 months, .50% for 3⌠etc.? Did you calculate those figures based on the expectant number of trades per month? Some other method?
I allow myself to risk up to 2% if my account is within 1% of equity high on the account.
If drawdown exceeds 1% I will cut allowable risk to 1%
At any time, I allow myself to risk less than these amounts. They represent Max allowable risk.
If I were you, I would shutdown the myfxbook, and never visit that site again. Start over with $1000 and apply these drawdown techniques. When you triple that account to $3000, look for investors or tap your savings and load up a $10,000 account and run that thing to $1M.
Mission Accomplished. Youâre now in Traderâs Nirvana! 
Man, you are sooo right on with what I have been thinking as far as altering the risk percentage on the basis of the depth of a drawdown. I have yet to come to any conclusion on the specifics, but that is EXACTLY what I am thinking.
So maybe I am missing something, but what is wrong with myfxbook? Is there some risk or something I should know about?
Itâs a gimmick. The only stats you need to track are your equity high and your current drawdown. If youâre too lazy to do up an excel sheet in 15 minutes, thatâs fine, but still thereâs no reason to keep your account public. Although I suspect âputting on a showâ is a major contributing factor to why you want to be a trader.
Just trade man. Cut the rest of the bullsh*t.
0.25% is the lowest amount I would ever risk on a trade. I like working with risk in 0.25% increments, thatâs all. There isnât any fancy math behind it. If you want to have a go with 0.30% or 0.88%, thatâs fine.
Oh and one could easily dump all the data from a dealer statement into a spreadsheet with a couple clicks. So I get that. And certainly I know how to make graphs in a spreadsheet if that is what I want.
And I understand being the cliche quiet trader. Hell, I traded stocks for years and nobody around me knows anything about it or even cares. I really didnât talk about it with anyone and did not go into forums or anything online with the subject. Last fall, my special lady friend sort of got me thinking about going into forums, setting up a blog, (all the public internet shix), probably more to just get me to find other people out there to talk about it with rather than bore her with it. She does have some interest, but not all tripped out and shix on it like me. So I started coming to this forum, made a blog, started a myfxbook account, now a twitter account, all that stuff. And you know, I never thought I would say it, but I am glad I did. It is therapeutic and I am starting to meet people that I can have conversations with that have been worthwhile.
I totally understand that there are loads of phony dudes selling their system, book, software, whatever; dudes showing off their myfxbook with 120% gain in the first two months (but donât show the last six blowups they did in different accounts) who disappear because now this account is blown. All that is to be expected. And perhaps all that gave me some hesitancy in going all internet n shix. But in the end, I think this has been a good idea for me because it has propelled my learning curve if only to help me ask the right questions.
And as far as me talking âArbitrager on Acid, MDMA, LSDâ, that is my outlet for pent up anxiety about this effed up drug war and the way peaceful people that actually do use psychedelics are robbed and put into cages for something they do in the privacy of their own space while those among them who are lucky enough not to get caught or who have political favoritism become president of the U.S. or bless the planet with the next major billion dollar technological advancement. It got me kicked out of another fx forum just because I registered the name âArbitrager on Acidâ.
It looks like there are actually a few other people out there I have been able to find that share my interests (LSD and trading) and this, so far has been worth it to find them. There is something more to myfxbook though. Suppose after some years, others see that I traded out of drawdown and did well over time (Bill Dunnâs company went through a five year drawdown of 60% and went on to beat all major equity indexes.) That would be good for people to see. That would be inspirational. That would be a positive out there and that is why I think I will keep it up.
I donât want fancy math. I want to ultimately set up a simple rule that is easy to remember that can be followed without a calculator that will help me vary the risk percentage in a way that would reduce depth of drawdown but maximize profit potential and I can see that it needs to include the expectant number of trades my system will produce in a given period of time and cause equity in a drawdown to approach some percentage of equity asymptotically rather than zero asymptotically (which is what a fixed fractional position size algo does).
That is the problem. Donât do this for the story. Your trading isnât a story, itâs a goddamn business.
I just read your babypips interview bio thing, and I was actually shocked at how much experience you have. It really doesnât show. Which is a bad thing. You would really think you would have learned to shutup and get to work by now.
If you feel isolated because your girl and friends donât give a sh*t about financial markets, I get it! This is a lonely business, and it gets even lonelier when youâre at the top. Why? because succeeding requires being able to shutup about your trading.
no it doesnât. whoever put that idea in your head is a forum-based wannabe trader. get that sh*t out of your head. I explained the extent of the complexity required to make a lot of money at this.