Risk first: sizing, stops, and circuit breakers

Survival is the precondition for compounding. An overview of the risk controls that sit around every strategy.

No single trade is allowed to matter very much. Positions are sized against volatility, every position carries a protective stop, and account-level circuit breakers halt trading after a defined loss. These controls are strategy-agnostic — they apply the same way whether the underlying signal is a moving-average system or an order-flow model.

Risk management is not a feature bolted on at the end; it is the layer the rest of the platform is built on.