Scripture Meets Size
Ecclesiastes 11:2 is a position-sizing verse, three thousand years before the first Bloomberg terminal. Here is how the old book actually sharpens a risk framework.
“Give a portion to seven, and also to eight: for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. (DRA)”
A verse that sizes positions
Open Ecclesiastes 11. Verse 2 says: give a portion to seven, and also to eight: for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth (DRA). It is a verse about diversification, written three millennia before anyone put a ticker on a screen. The Preacher was not writing for traders. He was writing for merchants, farmers, and shipping investors. But the underlying intuition, spread your exposure because the future is opaque, is exactly the intuition every survivor-trader stumbles into the hard way.
Let’s take the verse seriously and work it into a risk framework.
The intuition
The Preacher is saying three things at once:
- You do not know the future. (“for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth”)
- Concentrated exposure to one outcome is foolish in that environment.
- Diversification, seven or even eight portions, is the wise response.
A modern trader will read that and hear: you do not know which of your edges will work this month; do not bet the house on one; spread capital across non-correlated opportunities. The verse is older than the math. The math has not changed the verse.
Turning it into a rule
Here is how we operationalize it in the Stewards School framework. You will notice it is not fancy.
- Per-trade risk cap. No single trade risks more than 1% of account equity. This is the simplest translation of the verse: no one portion of your capital should be able to put you under. On a $50,000 book that is $500 of risk, which then sets the position size from the stop distance, not the other way around.
- Concurrent-position heat cap. Total open risk across all positions never exceeds 3%. You can have three trades at 1% each, not six trades at 1% each. This prevents the “I have seven great setups today” trap.
- Correlation check. If two positions would blow up together under the same market event (two tech growth names into a Fed decision, or two index futures off the same overnight session), they count as one position for heat purposes. The verse assumes portions are independent; correlated bets are not really multiple portions.
- Catastrophe cap. A drawdown of 10% triggers a hard pause. You step out, review, and come back sized down. This is the “disaster” clause in the verse: assume it can happen, and be ready. A prop-firm trader knows this number cold, because the firm has already written it into the account as a hard breach that ends the funding.
Those four rules, followed over a year, will keep a trader alive through the kinds of markets that have ended much more talented careers than ours.
The theological read
Why does scripture keep returning to themes of caution, stewardship, diversification, and the unknowability of the future? Because that is the creaturely posture. We are not God. We do not see the next month. What we have is the present, a plan, a portion of capital, and the command to be faithful with what is in front of us (Luke 16:10).
A risk framework is not a lack of faith. It is a confession of faith, a confession that the future is in His hands and not ours, and therefore we do not bet like small gods. The trader who respects position sizing is expressing, in math, what the Preacher expressed in poetry.
The trap to avoid
Some Christians will take the opposite read: “if God is sovereign, I can take a bigger position, because He is in control anyway.” That is not faith. That is presumption, which the scripture treats very differently from faith (Matthew 4:5–7). God being sovereign is exactly why you size prudently, because you are not Him, and the capital is not yours to press in a direction He has not revealed.
The rhythm
Sunday evening, after the day is over, I look at the week ahead. I decide how much total risk I am willing to put on. I break that into concurrent heat. I think about what events might blow up correlations: a Fed meeting, a CPI print, an earnings cluster in names I trade. I write a one-paragraph plan. Then I sleep, because the job is mostly about not over-participating on Tuesday, and an evening plan written cold is what makes Tuesday possible.
Ecclesiastes 11:2 is the mental backstop for the whole thing. Give a portion to seven, or even to eight. You do not know what disaster may happen on earth. Size like someone who has read the old book.
Suscipe.
“Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding, and my entire will.
All that I have and call my own.
You have given it all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.”
The Suscipe · St. Ignatius of Loyola
Start as a Postulant. Rise through the Novitiate. Profess when ready. No signals. No shortcuts. No rented conviction.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam