How Far This Market Moves in a Day — and Can You Survive It — Cambodia

Average daily range and regime

ADR = average daily high–low. Regime compares the last 14 sessions to the last 50: expanding markets need wider stops and smaller size; contracting ones the opposite. Weekend gap = average Monday open vs Friday close.

Risk per lot — size by dollars, not lots

The same ‘1 lot’ carries very different risk across instruments: in this sample a lot of XAG/USD (Silver) swings about $12,240 on a typical day versus $9 for JP225 (Nikkei 225) — roughly 1,352× the daily exposure. Position size compares fairly only when it is set from the dollar swing, which is what the lot size calculator does.

Range by weekday

Average daily range by day of week over the ADR window. Differences are indicative — news weeks reshuffle them.

The sequence this page belongs in

Daily range tells you how far the instrument normally travels. That decides the stop distance, because a stop inside ordinary movement is a stop that gets reached by ordinary movement.

Stop distance then decides the lot size, because the risk figure in the plan is fixed. Wider stop, smaller lot: the two always move in opposite directions, and forgetting the second half is the classic way a careful plan doubles its own risk.

Weekend gaps belong to the same conversation. A position carried through a market close can reopen away from where it closed, which is a reason for a first plan to be flat by the weekend.

Where this sits in a four-week practice run

This page is read once at the start of a demo run and then largely left alone. Its job is to set the stop distance for the instrument the plan names, and from that the lot size — after which the plan is supposed to stop changing so the log can measure it.

It comes back into use exactly once: when a second instrument is being considered. Then the whole calculation is redone from scratch rather than carried over, because carrying it over is the mistake this page exists to prevent.

Weekend gaps are the other reason to look. A practice plan that is flat before the close never has to explain a Monday that opened somewhere else.

The journal is what turns these numbers into a habit

A number read once is forgotten by the second week. A number written next to a trade, with the stop distance and the lot size beside it, becomes a routine that survives a bad month.

The log entry worth keeping is short: instrument, hour, stop distance, lot size, reason for entry written before the outcome, and what actually happened. Six fields, thirty seconds, every trade — including the ones taken against the plan, which are the most informative entries of all.

After four weeks that log will show one thing more clearly than anything else: whether the size was consistent. If it drifted, the month measured confidence rather than the plan, and the run has to be repeated before anything is funded.

The four-step routine this belongs to

Week one: the order ticket on a demo, until placing a protected order needs no thought. Week two: one page of written rules. Weeks three and four: those rules traded unchanged, every trade logged. Then a reading of the log, one change, and a repeat.

This page is consulted in week two and then closed. Its output is two numbers in the plan — a stop distance and the lot size that follows from it — and nothing on it should be revisited mid-run.

What to read next on the way in