Be as bold as you want yet protect your capital with the asymmetric risk reward strategy — an approach adopted by some of the greatest market wizards out there. In this Idea, we distill the concept of asymmetric bets and teach you how to risk little and earn big. Spoiler: legendary traders George Soros, Ray Dalio and Paul Tudor Jones love this trick.

Every trade you open has only two possible outcomes: you either turn a profit or make a loss. Perhaps the greatest thing you can learn about these two outcomes is the balance between them. The fundamental difference between making money and losing money — the mighty risk-reward ratio.

The risk-reward ratio is your trade’s upside relative to the downside you baked in (or realized).

Let’s Break It Down

Most traders believe that you have to take huge risks to be successful. But that’s not what the big guys in the industry do with the piles of cash they’ve got. Instead, they try to take the least amount of risk possible with the most upside. That’s what asymmetric risk-reward ratio means.

Think of it this way: you invest $1 only if you believe you can ultimately make $5. Now your risk-reward ratio is set at 1:5, or a hit ratio of 20%. Safe to say that you’ll likely be wrong lots of times. But step by step, you can risk another dollar for that $5 reward and build up a good track record or more wins than losses. That way you can be wrong four times out of five and still make money.

Let’s scale it up and pull these two further apart. Let’s say you want to chase a juicier profit with a small risk. You can pursue a risk-reward ratio of 1 to 15, meaning you risk $1 to make $15. The odds are very much in your favor — you can be wrong 14 times out of 15 and still break even.

What Does This Look Like in Practice?

Suddenly, the EUR/USD is looking attractive and you’re convinced that it’s about to skyrocket after some big news shakes it up. You’re ready to ramp up your long position. Now comes decision time — what’s a safe level of risk relative to a handsome reward?

You decide to use leverage of 1:100 and buy one lot (100,000 units) at the price of $1.10. That means your investment is worth €1,000 but in practice you are selling $100,000 (because of the leverage) to buy the equivalent in euro. In a trade of that size one pip, or the fourth figure after the decimal (0.0001), carries a value of €10 in either direction.

If the exchange rate moves from $1.1000 to $1.1100, that’s 100 pips of profit worth a total of €1,000. But if the trade turns against you, you stand to lose the same amount per pip. Now, let’s go to the practical side of things.

You choose to widen the gap between risk and reward and aim for profit that’s 15 times your potential loss. You set your stop loss at a level that, if taken out, won’t sink your account to the point of no return. Let’s say you run a €10,000 account and you’ve already jammed €1,000 into the trade.

A safe place to set your stop loss would be a potential drawdown of 2%, or €200. In pip terms, that’s equal to 20 pips. To get to that 1:15 ratio, your desired profit level should be 300 pips, aiming for a reward of €3,000.

If materialized, the €3,000 profit will bump your account by 30% (that’s your return on equity), while your return on investment will surge 200%. And if you take the loss, you’d lose 2% of your total balance.

It’s How the Big Guys in the Industry Do It

You’d be surprised to know that most of the Wall Street legends have made their fortunes riding asymmetric bets. Short-term currency speculator George Soros explains how he broke the Bank of England with a one-way bet that risked no more than 4% of his fund’s capital to make over $1 billion in profits.

Ray Dalio talks about it when he says that one of the most important things in investing is to balance your aggressiveness and defensiveness. “In trading you have to be defensive and aggressive at the same time. If you are not aggressive, you are not going to make money, and if you are not defensive, you are not going to keep money.”

Paul Tudor Jones, another highly successful trader, spotlights the skewed risk-reward ratio as his path to big profits. “5:1 (risk /reward),” he says in an interview with motivational speaker Tony Robbins,” five to one means I’m risking one dollar to make five. What five to one does is allow you to have a hit ratio of 20%. I can actually be a complete imbecile. I can be wrong 80% of the time, and I’m still not going to lose.”

What’s Your Risk-Reward Ratio?

Are you using the risk-reward ratio to get the most out of your trades? Do you cut the losses and let your profits run by using stop losses and take profits? Share your experience below and let’s spin up a nice discussion!