22/09/2025
On Position Sizing In Trading.
The market is a place where a man's fortune is not made by how often he is right, but by how much he has left after he is wrong. That is why the first and greatest rule in speculation, the rule that sits above all others, is the rule of position sizing. You may search for a thousand rules about entries, exits, charts, tips, and timing. But you will always come back to this one.
A man can be right about the direction of a stock and still lose everything if he has sized his position wrong. He can be wrong about the direction, but if his size is disciplined, he will live to fight another day. And the only fight that matters in this business is survival. If you cannot survive, you cannot profit. And if you cannot profit, then you have no business speculating. I have seen more men ruined not by being wrong but by being wrong with too much. They wanted to get rich on the first swing. They believed the market owed them something for their cleverness, for their information, for their confidence. But the market owes you nothing. It does not care if you are smart, bold, or certain. It does not care about your debts or your dreams. It only cares about your capital. And it will strip it from you the moment you place it in harm's way without protection.
Position sizing is protection. It is not glamorous. It does not make the headlines. Nobody boasts in the bucket shops about how small they bet or how cautious they were. But those who last, those who accumulate, those who become rich, they all whisper the same thing. Size is survival and survival is profit. You may hear a man say, "I knew that stock would go up, but I was shaken out by margin calls." What he really means is, "I was too big for my capital." Another will say, "I was right, but I couldn't hold." That is the voice of a man who put too much on the line.
Being right is useless if your size does not allow you to sit still. The market demands patience. But patience is only possible if your position is sized so that the daily jiggles, the sudden drops, the unexpected moves do not force you out. You cannot be patient if your heart is in your throat every tick. You cannot let your profits run if every down tick feels like ruin. You cannot cut your losses if the size is so large that you refuse to admit the mistake.
Aliyu Ibrahim Haidar
Founder CEO and Head Mentor, Age Fx
Your Favorite Forex Professor.
22/09/2025
