There will come a point (if it hasn't happened already) where you will find yourself not able to get a winning trade. Some stretch of trades where it seems that everyone of them is a loser. Now, psychologically this will quickly put you into a different state, but that is a topic for another day. Today we want to talk about what you can do to get back in the groove, and most importantly, not lose all your trading capital.

I'm assuming that those reading this have some sort of risk parameters when you enter a trade. One of the most common is to take the entry price you are considering and subtract it from your projected stop price. Once you have your total risk in dollars (or pennies) then you can take the total amount you are willing to risk on the trade and divide that by your total risk. This will tell you the amount of shares to buy for this particular trade.

If you find that you are having a tough time getting a trade right then one method you can use is to take half the risk but widen your projected stop by twice the amount. For example, if you project that the trade will require a stop to be $1 lower than your entry, expand that to $2 and buy half as many shares as you would have normally. This will still keep your total risk in dollar terms the same as it has been, but it will allow for more wiggle room in the underlying stock. See, sometimes it's just that the markets are more volatile and, for a short time, our stops need to be wider than normal.

Now, the goal here is not to enter a trade with half the shares and a stop that is double the normal size. You still have work to do in this trade. As you find that the trade is moving in your favor you need to add the other half of the shares to the trade. Do this when you can move the stop up to justify the risk and repeat for each trade until you get back on track.