Risk management is the real edge

Ask any trader who's lasted and they'll tell you the same thing: staying in the game matters more than any single trade. You can be right often and still blow up if one bad position is sized too big.

Good automated systems put risk first. Every trade gets a position size, a stop-loss, and a hard drawdown limit — decided before entry, not in the heat of the moment. That's what turns a strategy into something you can actually run over time.

When you judge any algorithm, look past the flashy return number and ask about the drawdown. How much did it risk to get there? The answer tells you far more about whether it's survivable.