Giordano Salvatori, founder of STA · 27/10/2026 · 6 min read
It is the set of rules you decide before opening a trade, telling you how much you can lose, how much to buy and when to get out if things go wrong. It is not about how you choose what to buy. It is about what happens when you are wrong, and in trading you are wrong often, even if you are good.
Beginners usually think about the possible gain. People who last a long time think about the maximum loss. If you are taking your first steps, the big picture is in the guide to mindful online trading: risk management is the piece that holds everything else up.
A widely used rule, drawn from practice more than from theory, is to risk no more than 1 or 2% of your account on a single trade. Pay attention to what it means: it is not the part of the account you put in, it is the part you lose if the price hits your stop. They are two different numbers, and mixing them up is one of the most common mistakes.
Take a made up example, just to understand the mechanism. You have an account of 2,000 euros and decide to risk 1%, that is, 20 euros. If you lose, the account drops to 1,980. It hurts just enough, and you can start the next trade with a clear head.
Because they are not recovered symmetrically. If you lose 10%, to get back to where you started you need to gain 11%. If you lose 50%, you need to gain 100%. The deeper the hole, the steeper the climb.
It applies to bad streaks too. Another illustrative example: ten losses in a row risking 1% each leave the account at about 90% of what it was. The same ten losses risking 10% per trade leave it at about 35%. In the first case you are in a bad mood, in the second you have closed the account. On how a drawdown is measured and lived through, there is the article on drawdown.
If you do not want to do the sums by hand, there is the position size calculator. The logic is identical: the stop decides how much to buy, not the other way round. To choose your stop with care, read stop loss: what it is and how to set it.
Yes, because it tells you how often you can be wrong without losing money. If you risk 1 to try to gain 2, you only need to be right once in three to avoid losing money, before costs. If you risk 1 to gain 0.5, you need to be right almost every time. A simple way to measure it is R, that is, the initial loss taken as the unit: what we explain in R in trading and why it matters more than win rate. The risk to reward calculator shows you the numbers of a trade right away.
It is the most delicate point. Leverage does not change how much you risk if the stop is in place, but it makes it much easier to overdo the size and brings the liquidation price closer to the stop. With high leverage, a normal move can close the position before the idea has had time to work. The full picture is in leverage in trading.
It happens to everyone, and it pays to decide beforehand what you will do. A few simple rules work well. A loss limit per day, and once you reach it you close the platform. A limit per week. And a rule against revenge: after a loss, do not increase the size to win it back, because that is the fastest way to turn a bad day into a halved account.
Keep a journal too: why you entered, where the stop was, how it ended. After twenty trades you can see for yourself where you go wrong most often.
Almost always the same ones. Removing the stop when the price gets close, hoping it will turn back. Moving it further away so as not to get closed out. Opening several positions on the same idea, for example three cryptocurrencies that move together, and believing you are diversified. Using a big size because «this time is different». In Europe, brokers that offer CFDs must disclose how many of their retail clients' accounts lose money, and the published percentages are often between 70% and 90%: that figure does not say trading is impossible, it says that without rules on risk it is easy to lose. The numbers are in whether you really make money with online trading.
On a demo account, with the same amounts you would really use. If on demo you risk 10% per trade because «it is fake money anyway», you are not learning anything, because with real money you will behave differently. Fix the percentage, calculate the position on every trade and check after thirty trades whether you followed the rules. How to make good use of the demo is explained in the guide to the free demo trading account.
In STA every card arrives with entry, stop and target already decided, and the result is measured in R, that is, in multiples of the initial loss. Ten artificial intelligence agents analyse the markets twice a day, with a debate between a Bull and a Bear, and your funds stay in your OKX account. The track record is public, losses included, with the hashes of the cards on GitHub.
The DEMO is free forever, with real prices and the same cards as REAL, and it is a good place to train the rules in this article. You need an account. During the launch phase, which began on 16 October 2026, STA's fees are temporarily disabled, even in REAL; the standard price list, suspended while the launch lasts, is 18% of the net positive result of each day, with no offsetting of losses.
Every card as soon as it closes, with the result and what STA learned from it. It's free and you don't need to sign up.
Follow the channelA DEMO account with virtual capital and real prices, the same cards as REAL users.
Try DEMO for free →This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Trading crypto-assets involves a high risk, including the total loss of the capital used. Numerical examples are for illustration.
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