Quote from Cavendish:
although it may not be of a massive relevance to a 4k starting up account, but in my opinion the central premis is relevant, this is how i look at risk budgeting. I also agree with JJ about positive expectance, and it always leads me on to thinking about another perverse piece of logic, which runs that if you have a good strong system with positive expectation you should trade within a risk management framework as discussed elsewhere, aiming for 1% daily standard deviation takes you 16% volatility a year, so a goo system should stay at this level (or at x level stdev) and play a long game.
conversely if you have a poor system, you should bet big and early in the hope of getting lucky quick, as in the ong run you will definitely lose. can never work out why that feels so odd, but i think its true. i think.
back on to risk framework - a daily VaR amount linked by the SQRT(252) formula to give an annual volatility as a rule of thum is good i think. i realise there are issues with linearity and distribution in moving from VaR to Stdev, but as a rule of thumb its okay.
Then use an expected shortfall type of approach with some scenarios relevant to your markets, and see if these losses would be acceptable. if not, look to hedge them with puts, diversifying positions, or simply reduce the position size.