Risk management
Position sizing, diversification and the guardrails behind every strategy.
Position sizing
Decide what fraction of your capital one single idea may risk. A common rule for active trades is 1 to 2% of the account per trade: if the stop-loss is hit you lose 1 to 2%, not the account. For long-term holdings, many people cap any single asset at 5 to 10% of the portfolio.
Worked example. Account: $5,000. Risk rule: 2% = $100 per trade. You want to buy a coin at $50 with a stop-loss at $45 (risking $5 per unit). $100 ÷ $5 = 20 units maximum. Even if this trade goes fully wrong you lose exactly the $100 you budgeted, and you can be wrong many times and still be in the game.
Diversification
Crypto assets move together in storms: when Bitcoin drops hard, almost everything drops. Mixing in other asset types, like the US stocks you can track here, spreads that risk a little. Diversification across 10 coins that all follow Bitcoin is not really diversification.
Volatility awareness
A 5% day is unusual for Apple and completely normal for a small-cap coin. Set your alert thresholds to each asset's own normal, otherwise you get noise from the volatile ones and silence from the calm ones.
Emotional guardrails
The reason alerts help is not the technology, it is that they let you decide levels while calm, and only involve you when a decision is actually needed. Checking prices 40 times a day leads to overtrading, and overtrading quietly eats portfolios through fees and mistakes.
Run it with CryptoAlertly
- Write your rules down once: max % per trade, max % per asset, and the alert threshold that counts as "unusual" for each asset you track.
- Encode the rules as alerts: a stop-loss alert below every position, and a 24h move alert tuned to each asset's normal volatility.
- When an alert fires, act on the written rule, not on the feeling of the moment. The plan was made by the smarter, calmer you.
Turn this into real alerts
Free plan, no card needed. Set a price target and we email you when it is crossed.