Ava doesn’t look at the chart first. She looks at your position ticket.
“Yesterday you built a trade that behaves,” she says. “Today we make sure you do. The engine is size. The fuel is risk capital. The keel is balance.”
You nod. Same canvas: $10,000 account, ETH idea, $100 max risk, −8% invalidation, +8% / +20% targets.
“Start with the engine,” Ava says. “Size is not a feeling; it’s a fraction.”
Entry near $3,000, stop $2,760 (−8%). One ETH would risk $240; your budget is $100. The math says 0.4167 ETH—about $1,250 notional. You place it. It looks small compared to what your ego wants. It looks correct compared to what your plan needs.
“Now imagine three straight stops,” Ava says, drawing three small X’s in your notebook. With the governor in place, that’s −$300 (−3%). Without it—if you “just round up” to 1 ETH—it’s −$720 (−7.2%). Same idea, same market, completely different survivability. You feel that difference in your stomach: one path invites revenge; the other invites review.
She flips the notebook to a clean page. “Next—the fuel.”
You remember the worst week you ever had: trading with rent money. Every tick sounded like a knock at the door. You cut early, added wrong, cut again. P&L was red; sleep was gone.
“Risk capital is the money that doesn’t make you bargain with yourself,” Ava says. “Your $10k sits outside obligations. When life gets loud, you shrink risk; you don’t cheat rules.”
A text buzzes: an unexpected bill. Old you would press the next trade to “cover it.” New you halves risk to $50 per idea until the noise passes. Same market. Quieter head. You can suddenly read again.
“Now the keel,” Ava says, pointing to your holdings. ETH rallied while you slept; your 20% ETH sleeve swelled to 32% of the portfolio. It feels like genius. It’s actually drift.
“Check the keel on a schedule,” she says. “Not when your mood changes.”
On your quarterly rebalance day with ±20% tolerance bands, 32% is beyond the top of the 24% band. You trim back to 20%, rotating the excess into lower-correlation ballast (BTC or a non-EVM sleeve, plus stables). It feels boring. It is strength.
“Run the sea backward,” Ava says. You imagine ETH down 25% from here. At 32% weight, that’s −8% on the whole book (−$800). At 20%, it’s −5% (−$500). $300 of pain that never arrives—because you adjusted structure, not fortune.
She caps the pen. “Governor. Budget. Keel. When you honor those three, bad weeks stay small and good weeks don’t trick you into fragility.”
You look at the ticket: 0.4167 ETH. You look at your budget sheet: bills walled off from the account. You look at the weights: ETH back at 20%, ballast in place. The room feels level.
Ava smiles. “Now you can learn faster than you bleed.”
Pocket anchors
Field drill (2 min • notebook + calc)
Write your next setup’s entry/stop and compute the correct size for $100 risk. Then list current sleeve weights vs targets; if any sits outside ±20%, write the exact orders you’ll place tomorrow morning to reset the keel.
How to protect positions during scheduled shocks—and how to stop self-inflicted leaks that drain your edge. We’ll finish by measuring your results in R so you know, not guess, what your system really produces.