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Winning strategies lose money in the hands of traders who size them wrong.
Before anything else, get this right. It matters more than any signal, any indicator, any entry. I put it ahead of the fun stuff on purpose.
1 · Risk a fixed, small slice per trade. The desk's own ladder adds risk in $2,500 equity steps, and it adds it the cheap way: butterflies add a contract per step, while the condor widens its wings instead of stacking contracts. Similar risk, a fraction of the fees. The ladder grows only after the account has earned it, and it steps down automatically after losses. The exact opposite of what fear tells you to do.
2 · Know the worst case before you enter, both of them. Every play here is defined-risk, and there are two numbers to know: the planned stop (what the rules risk, about $250 on a broken-wing fly, roughly the credit on a condor) and the structural max (what a gap straight through the stops can cost, about $270 on the fly, about $450 on the condor). Never hold a position whose max loss you can't say out loud.
3 · Small accounts: use XSP or a fixed 1-lot. XSP is the S&P at exactly 1/10 size: same trades, about 1/10 the dollars (broken-wing risk about $27). It's the difference between staying in the game and blowing up on a bad week.
A decade of real data drove this home. After real brokerage fees, the same trades made $18k at a fixed 1-lot and $193k on the desk ladder. Fees eat small traders alive. Sizing structure is the antidote. (A backtest is history, not a promise, but the lesson inside it is arithmetic, not luck.)
How you size IS the strategy.
This course is the free tier of The 3:25 Club. The paid desk posts every trade, entries, exits, wins and losses, as it happens.
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