Course › Level 3 — How not to lose your money

The 1% rule

Here's the most valuable sentence on this entire website:

Never risk more than 1% of your account on a single trade.

$100 account → risk $1 per trade. Sounds painfully slow? Look at what it buys you:

• At 1% risk, a losing streak of 10 trades costs you ~10% of your account. Annoying. Survivable. You keep learning.
• At 10% risk, the same streak costs ~65% of your account. You're finished, and losing streaks of 10 happen to good traders.

The math that kills accounts

Lose 50% of your account and you need +100% just to get back to zero. Losses hurt more than wins help — mathematically. The only defence is keeping every individual loss small, which is why professionals obsess over risk and beginners obsess over profits.

Risking 1% means you can be wrong dozens of times and still be in the game. Being able to stay in the game while you learn IS the edge.

Mark lesson complete