Risk discipline: how to teach this to a mentee
Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2026 7:22 am
I teach risk with numbers on a sticky, not speeches.
Day one: write daily loss limit in R and account currency. Day two: trade half size until they can name the limit without looking. Day three: review only process breaches - size, news window, revenge re-entry - before looking at P&L.
What I refuse to teach early: fancy partials, multi-pair correlation maths, and prop lore. Those become excuses. A mentee who can stop at the limit on a red Tuesday is ahead of a mentee who can quote firm rules but still clicks after the soft stop.
Homework is a one-page sheet they fill before London for a week. If the sheet is empty, we do not discuss setups. Risk discipline is a habit of writing constraints while calm. Teaching it means watching whether they still obey when the first stop hits. When a mentee breaks the limit, the lesson is the shutdown, not a speech. We reopen charts the next day. Teaching risk means protecting them from the urge to recover immediately while you watch.
Day one: write daily loss limit in R and account currency. Day two: trade half size until they can name the limit without looking. Day three: review only process breaches - size, news window, revenge re-entry - before looking at P&L.
What I refuse to teach early: fancy partials, multi-pair correlation maths, and prop lore. Those become excuses. A mentee who can stop at the limit on a red Tuesday is ahead of a mentee who can quote firm rules but still clicks after the soft stop.
Homework is a one-page sheet they fill before London for a week. If the sheet is empty, we do not discuss setups. Risk discipline is a habit of writing constraints while calm. Teaching it means watching whether they still obey when the first stop hits. When a mentee breaks the limit, the lesson is the shutdown, not a speech. We reopen charts the next day. Teaching risk means protecting them from the urge to recover immediately while you watch.