Stock trading is not just buying a stock and selling a stock to make profit, there are much more about it. When you talk about stock trading, you talk about Risk Management, money management, Emotional Discipline, Formulating a plan for buy/sell/stop-loss and having a profitable strategy. Trading is never an easy job.
We can never predict the stock market, no one can ever do that. So, how do traders actually earn money in the stock market if it is full of uncertainty?
"Trading is about managing yourself and your own anxieties"
In the correct approach of trading, we never try to predict the stock market. But, with technical analysis, we only have better odds. That doesn't mean we will have 100% accuracy on predicting a stock. That is why, we need to have risk management incorporated in our strategy. Meanwhile, we also have a stop-loss order method to serve as a protective defend for our total capital. Risk management and stop-loss order come hand in hand. With the integration of both of this, you can actually define how much you are willing to risk for each trade.
Many may perceive that trading is about the skill of predict what stock will outperform. But, that is solely based on luck. No one can ever predict the stock market. Have you ever bought a stock with perfect uptrend signals, but, it just doesn't go uptrend? Have you ever bought stock that has wonderful fundamental, but it just keep on going down? It can be very expensive to try to convince the market you are right. That is why, the only thing we can do is to manage ourselves.
As for how much we should risk for each trade, theoreticall 3% of our total capital. To achieve this less amount of risk, we must employ both stop-loss and Risk management together.
If you have no clue what is risk management and how you can apply risk management, you are still not ready to trade in the market. Don't try to learn from mistake by making the mistake yourself when you can learn from other's mistake. It is much more wiser to learn from other's mistake.
To learn more detail about Risk Management, you can visit: https://klsetrader.com/2018/07/31/risk-management-trading/
Hope this can help you to become a better trader.