Table of Contents
In this interview, veteran FX trader Blake Morrow sits down with the host to unpack what actually keeps traders in the game: discipline, speed in cutting losses, and a clear macro-technical edge. Blake’s background—from Marine Corps discipline to years on professional desks—shows up in every lesson he shares. He talks candidly about trading alongside handpicked pros, why the best traders exit losers fast, and how a “right idea, wrong time” mindset protects capital and sanity. If you’re new to trading or leveling up your process, this conversation sets the tone: simple charts, strict risk, and zero heroics.
In this piece, you’ll learn Blake’s core strategy pillars: how to pre-plan adds (and avoid martingale), when to size up only if you’d take the trade fresh, and how to anchor entries with simple technicals backed by a clear fundamental “why.” You’ll also see his approach to risk—knowing worst-case before entry, reducing size when uncomfortable, and accepting small losses as the cost of staying alive—plus the mindset shift that turns discipline into an everyday habit. By the end, you’ll have a practical playbook you can apply on your next trade: cut losers fast, buy pullbacks in confident setups, and let your edge—not your ego—decide size and timing.
Blake Morrow Playbook & Strategy: How He Actually Trades
Core Trading Identity
Blake keeps his playbook brutally simple: the same technical process he’s used for decades, wrapped in Marine-grade discipline. He doesn’t chase shiny indicators or reinvent his edge—he repeats what works and sizes appropriately when the market lines up.
- Trade a simple, repeatable chart process you trust.
- Resist adding indicators to “make more money”—add size only when the setup is proven.
- Build daily habits around the same routines so execution becomes automatic.
Risk First: Cut Losers Fast
His north star: small losses, taken quickly. “Right idea, wrong time” is a feature of markets, not a reason to fight price. Capital lives longer when you exit early and let the next setup come to you.
- Pre-define invalidation before entry; if price tags it, flatten immediately.
- Never “hope” a loser back—treat time spent digging out as a second loss.
- If the idea still makes sense later, re-enter on a fresh trigger—don’t nurse the old one.
Position Sizing & Adds
Blake is anti-martingale. Adds are allowed only when they’re mapped in advance at logical levels with a known exit—otherwise, you’re just averaging a mistake.
- Never add to a loser unless the add levels, max risk, and final stop were pre-planned.
- Ladder only at key supports/resistances you marked before the trade.
- If ads weren’t planned: don’t do them. Exit and reassess.
Technical Setup & Timing
He anchors execution to clean levels and lets the market prove him right. Simplicity—trend, levels, structure—beats complexity when you need to act fast.
- Mark the obvious HTF levels first; trade from level to level with clear invalidation.
- Enter on confirmation (reclaim, rejection, break-retest) rather than prediction.
- If structure degrades, step aside—“wrong time” is a valid outcome.
Macro Context & Edge
Blake’s edge is knowing why price might move—immersing in macro drivers—while keeping execution technical. He pairs narrative (policy, flows, positioning) with straightforward charts.
- Write a one-liner “why” for each trade (e.g., rate differentials, risk sentiment, commodity impulse).
- Let macro bias guide what you stalk; let levels/timeframes dictate when you act.
- When macro and technicals disagree, reduce size or pass.
Community & Experience Shortcut
He believes you can compress the learning curve by surrounding yourself with seasoned traders and absorbing their playbooks. Experience still matters—but you don’t need 10,000 lonely hours to get competent.
- Join or build a room with proven risk managers; copy their process, not their trades.
- Debrief daily: what was the signal, the stop, the exit—what would you repeat?
- Keep a “mistakes ledger” and fix one behavior at a time.
Discipline Protocol
The trait he keeps coming back to is discipline—the same mindset forged in the Marines. Discipline turns rules into reflexes and keeps you out of avoidable drawdowns.
- Hard cap daily loss; stop trading for the day if breached.
- Size down when you feel unsure; size up only when you’d take the trade fresh at the current price.
- Standardize pre-trade checks: thesis, level, trigger, stop, target, risk.
Capital Preservation & Survival
No capital, no trading. Blake treats big losses as existential threats and small losses as rent. Survival lets compounding do its job.
- Set maximum loss per trade and per day; refuse to exceed either.
- If you breach the daily limit, close platforms and review—don’t win it back today.
- Measure success by rule adherence and drawdown control, not just P&L.
Size Risk First: Define Max Loss, Then Build the Trade
Blake Morrow starts every idea by deciding how much he’s willing to lose—before he thinks about how much he could make. That single choice sets the stop, shapes the entry, and determines the position size. If the invalidation is too wide for the account risk, he doesn’t force it; he passes or waits for a better location. This keeps him from “hoping” in a trade that never fit his risk in the first place. It’s a filter, a discipline, and a stress reducer all at once.
In practice, Blake calculates the dollar risk first, marks the technical invalidation, then sizes the position to fit the gap between entry and stop. If volatility expands, he automatically shrinks in size; if volatility compresses, he can scale up without breaking his risk unit. He keeps a hard daily loss cap so one bad session can’t snowball into a drawdown spiral. And he only considers ads if they were planned and the combined risk still sits under that original max-loss line.
Let Volatility Drive Position Size, Not Your Confidence Level
Blake Morrow treats volatility like the speed limit of the market—faster tape, smaller size. He doesn’t let “I feel great about this setup” override the math; ATR, range expansion, and recent wick behavior tell him how tight a stop can be and how big he’s allowed to trade. When price action gets jumpy, he cuts unit size to keep the same dollar risk per idea. In calm markets, he allows larger positions because the expected swing to invalidation is smaller.
Practically, Blake starts with a fixed risk unit and divides it by the distance to his stop—volatility widens that distance, so position size shrinks automatically. If the math spits out a size that’s too small to matter, he skips the trade instead of forcing it. He also adjusts targets to match the regime: wider ranges mean he lets winners breathe, tighter ranges mean he takes profits sooner. The result is a smoother equity curve that isn’t hostage to mood or conviction—only to what the market is actually doing.
Diversify by Strategy, Underlying, and Timeframe to Smooth Equity Curves
Blake Morrow doesn’t rely on one-trick pony trades—he spreads risk across different play types, different markets, and different holding periods. For him, a trend-following swing in FX can live alongside a mean-reversion nibble in indices or a catalyst-driven commodity idea. When one lane stalls, the others often pick up the slack, so the equity curve doesn’t hinge on a single market mood. He also staggers timeframes—intraday scouts, swing positions, and occasional position trades—so P&L isn’t all tied to the same clock.
In practice, Blake boxes strategies with clear rules and avoids overlap that doubles his exposure to the same factor. If EURUSD and DXY are telling the same story, he treats them as correlated risk and sizes accordingly, instead of pretending they’re separate bets. He rotates toward instruments that actually respect his setup right now, not the ones he wants to trade. And if everything starts marching to the same beat, he reduces overall exposure and waits for dispersion to return—because a smooth equity curve is built by choice, not chance.
Trade Mechanics Over Predictions: Triggers, Invalidation, and Repeatable Execution
Blake Morrow doesn’t try to be a fortune-teller; he’s a mechanic. He builds each trade around a simple trigger—break, retest, reclaim, or rejection—so entries aren’t vibes, they’re events. Before he clicks, he writes down the invalidation that proves the idea wrong, which keeps him from “negotiating” with the price. The goal is not to guess tomorrow’s headline but to react the same way every time the market shows its pattern.
In execution, Blake waits for confirmation at his level, sizes up the stop, and sets targets that make the risk-to-reward worth it. If structure changes before trigger, he cancels—no FOMO fills. If triggered and invalidated, he exits immediately and logs the result, then hunts the next clean setup without baggage. By repeating these mechanics—trigger, size, stop, target, review—Blake turns trading into a process that works regardless of opinion, mood, or market noise.
Choose Defined Risk Setups; Avoid Unlimited Downside and Martingale Temptation
Blake Morrow keeps his edge by only taking trades where the worst-case is known and small. Defined risk means a hard stop at a logical invalidation, a fixed dollar loss, and no averaging down to “fix” a bad entry. If he can’t quantify the downside upfront—gap risk, binary events, thin liquidity—he passes without regret. That single rule keeps him out of revenge trades and roulette-wheel sizing.
He’s equally strict about never martingaling a loser; adds are allowed only if they were planned pre-trade and keep total risk under the original cap. When the price violates the thesis, Blake exits and looks to re-enter on a fresh trigger rather than nursing dead money. He prefers structures that naturally cap exposure—tight technical levels, defined-risk option structures, or position sizes calibrated to ATR—so one anomaly can’t crater the account. By enforcing defined risk and rejecting unlimited downside, Blake Morrow lets probability and repetition—not hope—compound his P&L.
In the end, Blake Morrow’s message is disarmingly simple: survival beats prediction. The best traders he’s worked with cut losers fast, accept “right idea, wrong time,” and move on before damage compounds. He builds every trade from the stop outward—define invalidation, size to volatility, and only pull the trigger on a clean event like a break, retest, reclaim, or rejection. If the structure changes, he cancels; if the stop hits, he exits without negotiation and looks to re-enter on a fresh signal.
He diversifies by strategy, instrument, and timeframe so no single market mood can sink the month, and he treats correlated bets as one line of risk. Ads are never a rescue; they’re pre-planned at logical levels and always inside the original max-loss. Macro informs the hunt, technicals govern the execution, and discipline—daily routines, hard loss caps, and meticulous reviews—turns that edge into something repeatable. That’s the real takeaway from Blake: trade a simple, rules-driven process that protects capital first, then let time and repetition do the compounding.
