Tips For Trading - 2% Rule

Applying the 2 Percent Rule

1. Calculate 2 percent of your trading capital: your Capital at Risk
2. Deduct brokerage on the buy and sell to arrive at your Maximum Permissible Risk
3. Calculate your Risk per Share:
   Deduct your stop-loss from the buy price and add a provision for slippage (not all stops are executed at the actual limit). For a short trade, the procedure is reversed: deduct the buy price from the stop-loss before adding slippage.
4. The Maximum Number of Shares is then calculated by dividing your Maximum Permissible Risk by the Risk per Share.

This rule may not be suitable for long-term traders who enjoy higher risk-reward ratios but lower success rates. The rule should also not be applied in isolation: your biggest risk is market risk where most stocks move in unison. To protect against this we should limit our capital at risk in any one sector and also our capital at risk in the entire market at any one time.

Covariance

The biggest flaw in most risk management systems is that stock movements influence each other. Individual trades are not independent. Markets march in unison and individual stocks follow. Of course there are mavericks: stars that rise in a bear market or collapse in the middle of a bull market, but these are the exception. The majority follow like a flock of sheep.

Thomas Dorsey in Point & Figure Charting gives an example of the risks affecting a typical stock:

Market risk Sector risk Stock risk

66% 24% 10%

As a rule of thumb, limit your Total Capital at Risk in any one industry sector to 3 times your (maximum) Capital at Risk per stock (e.g. 6% of your capital if you are using the 2 percent rule). This does not mean that you are limited to holding 3 stocks in any one sector. You may buy a fourth stock when one of your initial 3 trades is no longer at risk (when you have moved the stop up above your breakeven point on the trade); and a fifth when you have covered your risk on another trade; and so on.

Limit your Total Capital at Risk in the market to between 5 and 10 times your (maximum) Capital at Risk per stock (e.g. 10% to 20% of your capital if you are using the 2 percent rule). Adjust this percentage to suit your own risk profile. Also, the shorter your time frame and the higher your Success Rate, the greater the percentage that you can comfortably risk.