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I've been asked to write something for newer members on risk, and rather than a lecture I'll just list the mistakes I made in my first five years. All of them cost real money, some of them more than once.

Moving the stop "just a bit" when price approached it. I did this for most of 2004. The trades that I saved this way were small wins. The ones I didn't save became my largest losses.

Risking a fixed lot size instead of a fixed percentage. When my account was down 20%, I was still trading the same size, which meant each loss hurt proportionally more.

Thinking that a high win rate meant I was managing risk well. I had a 70% win rate one year and still lost money, because my average loser was more than twice my average winner.

No daily loss limit. A bad morning turned into a bad day, then a bad week, because I kept trying to win it back.

Treating a profitable month as proof I'd figured it out. I increased size by 50% after one good month in 2006 and gave it all back in three weeks.

None of these are clever insights. They're just very common, and the cost of learning them yourself is high.

The 70% win rate year is the one I'd want every new trader to read twice. I had something similar, about 65% with an average loser 1.8 times my average winner, which left me roughly flat after costs. I spent months thinking my entries were the problem, when it was really my exits.

Moving the stop had a specific pattern for me. I'd move it when price was within two or three pips, which is exactly where the spread can tag it. So I ended up paying the spread on a wider loss instead of the original one.

I'd add one more to the list: trading correlated pairs as if they were separate trades. Long EURUSD and long GBPUSD at full size each felt like two ideas. On a dollar spike it was one idea at double size.

On the size increase after a good month, what rule did you settle on afterwards? I use a three month average before any change, and never more than 25% at a time.

The daily loss limit is the mistake on your list I still see people treat as optional. I write it as a platform hard stop now, not a promise, because willpower after two losers is not a risk tool.

On the size increase rule, the three month average helped, but I had to add a drawdown gate. If equity is more than 8% below its three month high, size stays frozen even when the average says I can raise it.

That stopped me from scaling into a recovery that was not finished. The 25% step still applies when the gate is clear.

Correlated pairs stay on my list as the quiet version of the fixed lot mistake. Same dollar bet under two symbols still feels like diversification until the spike.

LondonScalper, after you settled on a size rule, how long did you wait before the first increase under it? I'm curious whether you forced a cooling period or went as soon as the maths allowed.