Everyone gets into trading thinking about how much they can win. The ones who stay think first about how much they can lose. That inversion is the difference between staying in the game and being knocked out of it.
Risk per trade
The most important question isn't "how much will I make?" but "how much do I lose if it goes wrong?". A classic rule: risk little per trade — many traders use somewhere between 1% and 2% of their balance per trade.
Why? Because losses come in streaks. Losing 5 in a row risking 2% takes about 10% off your balance. Risking 20% takes almost all of it. The math is unforgiving.
You don't control whether a trade wins. You control how much it can hurt you. Focus on what's under your control.
Session stop: know when to quit
Beyond the per-trade limit, it's worth setting a daily limit — for both loss and gain. Hit the day's loss limit? The bot stops. Hit the target? Worth stopping too. This protects you from two enemies: the desperation to "win it back" and the greed of "just one more".
In Orby you set this right on the strategy:
max loss per trade: $40
session stop-loss: $120
session take-profit: $150
Demo isn't a waste
Running on demo first isn't wasted time — it's where you learn the strategy's behavior without paying for it. The point of demo isn't to see how much you "would have made". It's to see how you react to a losing streak, because one will happen.
What no risk management can fix
Risk management doesn't turn a bad strategy into a good one. It just keeps you alive long enough to find out whether the strategy is any good. And it reminds you of the truth every trader has to accept: past results don't guarantee future results, and you can lose part or all of your capital.
Start small. Protect the downside. The rest follows.