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You must read Money Management Rules (Part I) before you start reading this article. Failure in investing can come in two forms. One is failure to maintain your principle. Most investors fail because they lose their principle too soon. The second failure is to effectively grow your principle. If you want to become a successful currency trader, you should learn how to protect and how to grow your principle in the long run.

If you risk too much, you lose a large portion of your account. Risk more to try to recover the lost amount and lose all your account. There is another form of failure. You are able to grow your account 20% annually. On the surface, you may be a successful investor. But, if you had a good money management plan you could have made 40% annually. So was it a success or failure.

How much is truly at risk in a single trade? Many traders misunderstand this. Suppose you have a $10,000 account. You buy one lot of EUR/USD that is $100,000. Your broker will set aside $1000 in your account as a margin. So how much of your money is at risk? Many would say only $1000. They are wrong. You have now only $9,000 to trade. So your risk is $9,000. You could lose up to this much before you receive a margin call from your broker.

A margin call is an order when your dealer automatically takes you out of the trade once you have lost $9,000 and only $1000 is remaining. Once you get the margin call, it means you are out of the trade. How could you lose $9,000 in a single trade?

Each pip on a EUR/USD contract is equal to $10. In order to lose $9,000, you need to lose (900*10=9000) 900 pips. Many would say what about the stop loss, dont you need to use it. You are right! You dont need to risk your whole account on a single trade. Never ever trade without a stop loss! You can use stop losses to protect your position as a protection if the trade goes wrong. You could put a 50 pips stop loss losing only $500. You could put a stop loss at 100 pips losing $1000 only.

No matter where you set the stop loss, the amount of money that you set aside with your broker as margin does not tell you anything about the risk unless you plan to get a margin call. Understand these common money management pitfalls. Until and unless, you do not develop your own money management rules, you will most likely slip into one or more of these pitfalls.

Investors who enjoy the greatest amount of success in their forex trading are those who have clearly established rules that govern their trading. Those rules are; 1) Live to trade another day, 2) Knowing how much to risk and 3) Knowing how to determine the trade size. You should read Part III of this article to know more on these rules.