What is Capital Preservation?

Capital Preservation
Forex Trading Glossary

Quick Answer: Capital preservation focuses on protecting trading funds with conservative sizing, strict stops, and disciplined process.

What is Capital Preservation?

Capital preservation is a defensive mindset that prioritizes protecting trading capital over aggressive growth. Traders who preserve capital can stay in the game long enough to exploit high-quality opportunities.

Core Principles

  • Position sizing: Risk only a small percentage per trade.
  • Stop-loss discipline: Predefine exits and honor them.
  • Diversification: Spread exposure across strategies and timeframes.
  • Drawdown control: Set hard limits for daily, weekly, and monthly losses.

Mindset Shift

Capital that survives can always grow later. Capital that disappears cannot trade another day.

Practical Actions

  • Trade filtering: Skip marginal setups rather than forcing trades.
  • Hedging tools: Offset exposure with options or correlated pairs when volatility rises.
  • Performance reviews: Audit systems regularly to remove underperforming rules.
  • Emergency plans: Plan for platform outages and broker issues before they happen.

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