The core of contract to avoid big losses
Trading is never an easy thing. As a contract trader, what kind of trading makes you most painful? It is painful to miss a trading opportunity that is on the trend, but it is more painful to exit the market with a huge loss when the order that could have been profitable ends up. Do you often encounter such a problem? You make a profit when you open a position, but the price immediately runs in the opposite direction. You are reluctant to leave with a small loss, and finally you have to leave with a big loss or a margin call, and the profit turns into a loss. Fantasy and hesitation are the biggest enemies of traders in the process of holding positions, which will make you forget discipline. You will be reluctant to stop loss when you lose money, and you will be reluctant to stop profit when you make a profit. If you are lucky and exit smoothly, you will retire from the market from then on. Otherwise, you will return all the profits and principal to the market, and you will be heavily in debt. The most direct and fundamental reason for this consequence is the lack of a trading plan. Trading master Livermore described the trading plan like this: "Plan your trades, trade your plans." What exactly is a trading plan? The plan is made before the transaction. Once you enter the market, you have to trade according to the plan, and no other factors can affect you. A trading plan takes your emotions out of the trading process, so it must be highly specific but easy to follow. It can be summarized in three sentences. What do you want to buy, how do you plan to buy it, and what do you do after buying it. "He who wins before the battle has made many calculations; he who loses before the battle has made few calculations. Those who make many calculations win, those who make few calculations lose, and what about those who make no calculations at all?" This sentence comes from "The Art of War by Sun Tzu", which talks about the ancients who had made careful "calculations" before the battle, fully estimated the favorable and unfavorable conditions, and often won after the battle; before the battle, they failed to make careful "calculations" and rarely analyzed the favorable and unfavorable conditions, and often failed after the battle, not to mention that they had no "calculations" before the battle. We all like to compare trading to a battlefield without gunpowder smoke. Trading is the same as marching and fighting. The ancients said "make plans before you act". Anything needs to be planned and prepared before it can be done. The same is true for futures trading. No matter what cycle or product you are trading, you must make a trading plan for each order. The trading plan is about how much money you will lose, not how much money you will win.The most important thing in trading is to try to keep your capital so that you can live well in this market. You need to make plans everywhere in life. Just like farmers have to prepare spring ploughing plans every spring. For example, what crops to plant in the first crop (select opening varieties), when to turn the soil (determine the entry time), when to sow (opening preparation), how long to weed (fund management), what to do when encountering disaster weather (response), etc. Then we make trading plans in the same way. People who know how to trade know how important it is to make plans for trading. The process of making trading plans is the process of carefully analyzing and studying the market. If you want to understand market signals, you must insist on talking to the market every day. The way to talk to the market is: make plans, see the results, then summarize, and persist for a long time. How to make a good trading plan? First, review the market every day and start with the index, take a panoramic view of the overall market situation, and look at the current market situation, including the situation of the foreign market. Then start to review each variety and find out if there are any operable opportunities and what the current market situation is like. Specifically, find out which one is strong and which one is weak in the commodity, why I choose this variety, which variety is more suitable for my trading mode, should I choose one or do all related varieties. Second, then find the entry point. If this position jumps tomorrow, should I make a trade? If it meets expectations, at which position should I enter the market? If it goes in the direction I expected after entering the market, at which position should I exit? If it does not go as I expected after entering the market, where should I stop loss. If it is a volatile trend after entering the market, what should I do? Third, what is the success probability of the selected variety, what is the prepared stop loss ratio, if this position is successfully opened, should I do it intraday or daily. What is the position configuration. Fourth, what is the price range of my opening position, at which point should I plan to close the position for profit, and whether the expected risk-reward ratio is worthwhile. Fifth, if I encounter a sudden black swan event after opening a position, how should I deal with the order in my hand. The above items basically cover several steps of the trading plan. As long as we do these preparations before the market, we don’t have to be affected by the news during the market. We just need to wait quietly and wait for our market to enter.As for the market conditions outside the plan, it is not a pity that we cannot do it. The biggest benefit of the trading plan is to avoid emotional trading, impulsive trading and trading with uncontrollable risks during the trading session. You don't have to worry about the flaws in the trading plan. Only when there are shortcomings can it be improved. The most feared thing is that you don't make a trading plan but instead make transactions outside the plan with uncontrollable risks. It is not easy to stick to doing one thing for a long time, and trading is so lonely, but there is no victory in this world that can be gained without paying. The improvement of a person's trading level is actually the result of long-term persistence and summary. Opportunities are reserved for those who are prepared. Trading is a marathon. As long as you stick to it, you will eventually achieve your small goals.

