{"id":18895,"date":"2021-09-01T16:05:43","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T20:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jeffclarktrader.com\/?p=18895"},"modified":"2021-09-01T16:05:43","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T20:05:43","slug":"the-only-good-risk-is-earned-risk-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/the-only-good-risk-is-earned-risk-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The Only Good Risk Is Earned Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Andrew&rsquo;s note:<\/strong> Andrew Miller here, managing editor of the <em>Market Minute<\/em>, with another essay from legendary hedge fund trader Larry Benedict.<\/p>\n<p>Larry didn&rsquo;t become legendary by accident though, he learned everything he could about managing his risk and gradually taking in profits. Now, he wants to share one of his best kept secrets&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.opportunistictrader.com\/?cid=MKT570323&#038;eid=MKT572702&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC112946\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a unique window in the markets<\/a> that most traders have never heard of&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>He&rsquo;ll be revealing everything about this highly profitable window next Wednesday, September 8 at 8 p.m. ET&hellip; but spots are filling up fast, so <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.opportunistictrader.com\/?cid=MKT570323&#038;eid=MKT572702&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC112946\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">click right here to reserve yours now<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And below, keep reading to find out what Larry has to say about earning your risk &ndash; the biggest concept that&rsquo;s lost on most new traders&hellip;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>The biggest, most important concept in trading is something that&rsquo;s totally lost on most new traders.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s simple. But it&rsquo;s directly at odds with the &ldquo;fast cash&rdquo; mindset that gets most people interested in trading to begin with.<\/p>\n<p>You have to &ldquo;earn your risk.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Let me explain&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>When folks are new to trading, they tend to look for ludicrous returns right out of the gate. They speculate on long-shot bets and blow away all their starting capital. (I did the same. More on that later&hellip;)<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;m not saying there&rsquo;s no room for those long-shot bets. They can be lucrative, if you have the right plan.<\/p>\n<p>But they have to be&nbsp;<em>earned<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>You should only look to place these riskier bets after you&rsquo;ve captured profits from a number of smaller ones.<\/p>\n<p>You need to grow your capital pile with low-risk trades before you shoot for the moon. That way, you&rsquo;re protected if the risky trade goes bust&hellip; And you&rsquo;re still around to trade the next day.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s what keeps you sustainable.<\/p>\n<p>What tends to happen is a trader will go on a losing streak&hellip; get frustrated and emotional&hellip; and just wind up losing more, even faster, because they aren&rsquo;t looking to capture small profits to recover their losses.<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;ve seen it happen with plenty of new traders, all throughout my career. And it&rsquo;s one of the key factors that drives them out of business.<\/p>\n<p>Only once you&rsquo;ve built up a strong foundation have you earned the ability to take on more risk.&nbsp;And if you&rsquo;re on a losing streak, you&rsquo;ve lost the ability to play with risk.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s really that simple.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center\">It Happened to Me, Too<\/h2>\n<p>I made my big mistakes early on in my career&hellip; And it cost me all of my money several times over.<\/p>\n<p>It really came down to a bunch of silly mistakes. One of them was position sizing. I would bet way too much on one risky trade and wipe myself out. After a few times of doing that, I began trading smaller lots.<\/p>\n<p>But once I got further into my career and had a solid foundation of capital, I began to take on larger position sizes.<\/p>\n<p>At first, I was only able to handle 10 shares of stock. Then 100&hellip; 1,000&hellip; then 10,000.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Soon I was making trades on hundreds of thousands of shares at a time. Then, when I was running my hedge fund, I was trading position sizes in the millions.<\/p>\n<p><em>That&rsquo;s because I earned my risk.&nbsp;<\/em>The lots I was trading&nbsp;<em>grew<\/em>&nbsp;<em>along with my pile of capital<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>You see, I never looked at any position differently. It was the same mentality, no matter the size of the position. I built up my capital base bigger and bigger, and slowly earned the ability to trade more substantial sums.<\/p>\n<p>And that grew my capital pile exponentially&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>Here&rsquo;s an example: One of the larger positions I&rsquo;ve taken in my career was in Bank of America, in early 2009. This was back when Bank of America was going bankrupt. We were dealing with the financial crisis.<\/p>\n<p>So, I saw an amazing opportunity. I bought $108 million worth of Bank of America in one shot. I went in and got 27 million shares at $4 each &ndash; close to the bottom.<\/p>\n<p>I made somewhere between $3 million and $5 million on that trade.<\/p>\n<p>That sounds like a massive return&hellip; But it&rsquo;s actually just about a 4-6% move.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, I took a gain that, in percentage terms, most traders would consider small&hellip; but was worth millions.<\/p>\n<p>To build your capital pile, those are precisely the gains you should be looking for on each and every trade. If you&rsquo;re able to make 3% or 5% several times a week, your trading account will start growing exponentially.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s why I don&rsquo;t get nervous about position sizes. Every position size is basically the same to me. It&rsquo;s how I&rsquo;ve done as well as I have.<\/p>\n<p>Bank of America was an outlier, of course. It was a massive position for me. But it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There was a global financial crisis happening, and I saw the perfect opportunity to trade it.<\/p>\n<p>But I had EARNED that risky trade by slowly building up my capital pile into the hundreds of millions.<\/p>\n<p>Even by starting with just a $100 trading account, you can do the same. It&rsquo;s all about playing it safe until you earn your risk&hellip; and&nbsp;<em>then<\/em>&nbsp;making that life-changing home run.<\/p>\n<p>Regards,<\/p>\n<p>Larry Benedict<br \/>Editor, <em>The Opportunistic Trader<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>P.S. <\/strong>In a couple of weeks, the market will enter a rare window I call &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/signup.opportunistictrader.com\/?cid=MKT570323&#038;eid=MKT572702&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC112948\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the 7-day blitz<\/a>.&rdquo; This rare event could allow you to hit a home run even with a small, conservative investment.<\/p>\n<p>Because of its rarity, the profit potential is <em>significantly<\/em> higher than normal during these times&hellip; I&rsquo;ve even made almost $45 million for my clients trading during this window, and the next <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.opportunistictrader.com\/?cid=MKT570323&#038;eid=MKT572702&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC112948\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&ldquo;7-day blitz&rdquo; is right around the corner<\/a>. But most folks don&rsquo;t know how to trade it, or even what it is&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s why on Wednesday, September 8 at 8 p.m. ET, I&rsquo;ll be hosting a special briefing letting you know exactly what &ldquo;the 7-day blitz&rdquo; is and how you can prepare yourself for the chance at a home run. I&rsquo;ll even give away the exact ticker I use to trade it to help you get started.<\/p>\n<p>This opportunity won&rsquo;t last long, so <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.opportunistictrader.com\/?cid=MKT570323&#038;eid=MKT572702&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC112948\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reserve your free spot for the event right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re losing, you can\u2019t afford the risk&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"service":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication":[10],"person":[58],"newsletter-type":[],"ticker":[],"class_list":["post-18895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-minute","publication-market-minute","person-larry-benedict"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18895"},{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=18895"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=18895"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-type?post=18895"},{"taxonomy":"ticker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ticker?post=18895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}