Everything in this section reduces to a single page you write once and follow afterwards. The value is not in the sophistication of the rules but in their existence before the moment they are needed — a rule decided calmly is worth more than a decision made well.
Why it has to be written
Rules held in your head are not rules. They are intentions, and intentions are revised under pressure without you noticing.
A written plan does three things a mental one cannot:
It fixes the numbers. “About 1%” becomes 1%.
It makes breaks visible. You can see that you took 2% on a trade, because the document says 1%.
It separates the decider from the executor. The version of you writing the plan is calm and has no position open. That version should be making these decisions.
The plan template
RISK PLAN
Account: ____________ Date: ________
1. CAPITAL
Account balance: ________
Money I can afford to lose entirely
without affecting my life: ________
2. RISK PER TRADE
Percentage: ________
In money at current balance: ______
3. POSITION SIZING
Always calculated from stop distance
Always rounded down
Calculator used every trade: Y
4. STOPS
Placed from structure
Minimum ____ × ATR
Never widened once placed
Always placed with the entry
5. TARGETS
Minimum R:R: ________
Checked against ATR before entry
6. EXPOSURE
Max open risk: ________
Max per currency: ________
Correlated positions count as one
7. LIMITS
Daily stop: ________
Weekly stop: ________
Monthly stop and review: ________
8. AVOID
Flat before: ____________________
No trading during: ______________
9. REVIEW
Journal every trade in R
Weekly: rules followed?
Monthly: expectancy calculation
Nine sections. It fits on one page and takes twenty minutes to complete honestly.
Filling in the harder parts
Section 1 — capital
The second line matters more than the first. Trading capital should be money whose complete loss changes nothing about your circumstances.
This is not a motivational statement. Capital you cannot afford to lose produces decisions that are wrong for trading reasons — holding losers because the loss cannot be accepted, closing winners early because the profit is needed. The pressure shows up in execution.
If the honest answer is that the account is money you need, the correct response is a smaller account, not a determination to be careful.
Section 2 — risk per trade
Start lower than feels right. 0.5% while learning, 1% once you have a documented record.
Write the money amount alongside the percentage. Seeing “$25” makes the rule concrete in a way “0.5%” does not.
Section 6 — exposure
The one most traders leave blank and then discover during a dollar move.
A workable default: maximum 3% total open risk, maximum 2% exposure to any single currency, correlated positions counted as one.
Section 8 — avoid
Fill this in specifically rather than generally. “High impact news” is vague; “flat before Fed, US CPI and NFP” is actionable.
Include the sessions you have decided not to trade, and your instrument’s daily break if it has one.
Testing the plan
Before trading it, run it against situations you will actually face.
| Situation | Does the plan answer it? |
|---|---|
| Three losses by midday | Daily limit |
| A setup that looks exceptional | Risk per trade — unchanged |
| Price approaching the stop | Stops never widened |
| Four dollar setups at once | Per-currency limit |
| Down 12% for the month | Monthly limit and review |
| Volatility doubled | ATR-based stops, smaller size |
| NFP in twenty minutes | Avoid list |
If any row has no answer, the plan has a gap. Fill it now rather than discovering it live.
Reviewing it
Weekly, ten minutes. How many trades followed every rule? Which rule was broken most? What was the expectancy on rule-following trades versus the others?
That last comparison is the most valuable number in trading. A trader with +0.4R on rule-following trades and −0.5R on the rest does not have a strategy problem, and no amount of new analysis will help.
Monthly, thirty minutes. Recalculate expectancy across the full record. Check whether the average loss has drifted above −1R. Update the money figures if the balance has changed meaningfully.
Change the plan rarely. Adjustments should follow evidence from a reasonable sample, not a bad week. A plan revised after every difficult period is not a plan.
Where signals fit into a risk plan
The framing this Academy has used throughout, stated once more because it belongs here.
A signal provides analysis: an entry, a stop, a target. Your risk plan provides everything else — position size, whether the exposure fits, whether you have already hit your daily limit, whether a release is imminent.
No provider can supply those, including us. We do not know your balance, what else you hold, or how your week has gone. Those are exactly the variables that determine your result.
Our signals use one entry, one stop, one target and a full close, which makes the risk arithmetic checkable in seconds: stop distance gives you position size, and the R:R is visible before you act. That is the point of the structure.
Traders who run signals through their own plan use them well. Traders who copy without the plan have outsourced the analysis and kept all of the risk, which is the wrong half to keep.
Where automation helps is execution — Telegram Trade Linker handles the mechanics from Telegram to MT4 or MT5 and enforces daily loss limits and risk controls you configure in advance. Configured limits are more reliable than intentions. But the limits themselves come from your plan, and writing that plan is not something a tool can do.
Closing the section
This section has made one argument repeatedly: results are determined more by how much you risk than by how well you analyse.
That is uncomfortable, because analysis is the interesting part and risk management is arithmetic and restraint. Most traders spend years improving the first while the second quietly decides the outcome.
The traders I have seen last are not the ones with the best reads. They are the ones whose position size on their two hundredth trade is calculated the same way as on their second, and who stopped for the day when the rule said to.
None of it is difficult to understand. All of it is difficult to do consistently, which is why it remains an edge.
What to do next
The Trading Psychology section addresses the part this one cannot: why traders break rules they understand perfectly, and what actually helps.
The MT4/MT5 Tutorials section covers the platform mechanics — placing stops correctly, calculating lot sizes in the terminal, and the settings that prevent execution errors.
For daily analysis across forex, gold and indices, see our Daily Market Analysis, and the calculator suite covers position sizing, pip value, margin and drawdown. The free Telegram community is open to join.
Frequently asked questions
What should a forex risk plan include?
Capital and what you can afford to lose, risk per trade, position sizing method, stop and target rules, total exposure limits, daily and weekly loss limits, situations to avoid, and a review schedule. One page covers all of it.
Why write the plan down instead of remembering it?
Because rules held mentally get revised under pressure without you noticing. Writing fixes the numbers, makes rule breaks visible in the record, and lets the calm version of you decide for the version holding a losing position.
How often should I change my risk plan?
Rarely, and only on evidence from a reasonable sample. A plan revised after every difficult week is not functioning as a plan. Monthly reviews update the numbers; the rules themselves should be stable.
What is the most useful thing to review?
Expectancy on rule-following trades compared with the rest. A trader positive on the first and negative on the second has an execution problem, and no amount of additional analysis will address it.
How do signals fit into a risk plan?
A signal supplies the analysis — entry, stop, target. Your plan supplies position size, whether the exposure fits what you hold, and whether you should be trading at all today. No provider can know those variables.
Can a trade copier enforce my risk rules?
Partly. Copiers can enforce configured daily loss limits and position caps, which is more reliable than willpower. But the limits themselves come from your plan, and deciding them is not something a tool does for you.