#Educational Post:

Whether you’re day trading or swing trading, there are a few fundamental concepts about risk that you should understand. These form the basis of your understanding of the market and give you a foundation to guide your trading activities and investment decisions. Otherwise, you won’t be able to protect and grow your trading account.

The risk/reward ratio (R/R ratio or R) calculates how much risk a trader is taking for potentially how much reward. In other words, it shows what are the potential rewards for each $1 you risk on an investment.

The calculation itself is very simple. You divide your maximum risk by your net target profit. How do you do that? First, you look at where you would want to enter the trade. Then, you decide where you would take profits (if the trade is successful), and where you would put your stop-loss (if it’s a losing trade). This is crucial if you want to manage your risk properly. Good traders set their profit targets and stop-loss before entering a trade.

Now you’ve got both your entry and exit targets, which means you can calculate your risk/reward ratio. You do that by dividing your potential risk by your potential reward. The lower the ratio is, the more potential reward you’re getting per “unit” of risk.

How to calculate the risk/reward ratio?

Let’s say you want to enter a long position on Bitcoin. You do your analysis and determine that your take profit order will be 15% from your entry price. At the same time, you also pose the following question. Where is your trade idea invalidated? That’s where you should set your stop-loss order. In this case, you decide that your invalidation point is 5% from your entry point.

So, our profit target is 15% and our potential loss is 5%. How much is our risk/reward ratio? It is 5/15 = 1:3 = 0.33. Simple enough. This means that for each unit of risk, we’re potentially winning three times the reward. In other words, for each dollar of risk we’re taking, we’re liable to gain three. So if we have a position worth $100, we risk losing $5 for a potential $15 profit.