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Size a trade from your balance, risk percentage and stop loss.
This is the calculator that decides whether an account survives. Position sizing is the step where a stop-loss level and a risk tolerance become an actual number of lots, and it is the step most retail traders skip — trading a habitual size and letting the risk fall wherever the stop happens to be.
Enter your balance, the percentage of it you are willing to lose on this idea, and how far away your stop sits in pips. The calculator returns the lot size that makes those three numbers consistent, plus a table showing how the size changes at other risk levels.
1 pip = 0.0001 on EUR/USD
Most professionals stay at or below 2%.
Distance from entry to your stop.
Position size
0.667 lots
66,667 units of EUR
Amount at risk
$200.00
2.00% of $10,000.00
Pip value at this size
$6.67
$10.00 per standard lot
Risk per standard lot
$300.00
30.0 pips x pip value
Notional exposure
$72,333.33
Full contract value you control
Balance after a full stop-out
$9,800.00
If the trade hits your stop loss
| Risk per trade | Amount at risk | Position size (lots) | Units | Notional |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.25% | $25.00 | 0.083 | 8,333 | $9,041.67 |
| 0.50% | $50.00 | 0.167 | 16,667 | $18,083.33 |
| 1.00% | $100.00 | 0.333 | 33,333 | $36,166.67 |
| 2.00% | $200.00 | 0.667 | 66,667 | $72,333.33 |
| 3.00% | $300.00 | 1.000 | 100,000 | $108,500.00 |
| 5.00% | $500.00 | 1.667 | 166,667 | $180,833.33 |
Calculations use PipDig's static demo rate table (snapshot 2026-08-01). These are illustrative mid prices for education only — they are not live quotes, and your broker's spread, commission and swap will change the real result.
Position sizing inverts the usual question. Instead of asking “how much could I make on two lots?” it asks “if I am wrong, how much am I prepared to lose — and what size makes that true?” Everything else follows arithmetically.
Multiply the account balance by your risk percentage. On a $10,000 account risking 2%, that is $200. This number is a decision, not a calculation, and it should be made once and written down rather than re-argued on every trade.
Take the pip value for one standard lot of the instrument, in your account currency, and multiply it by the stop distance in pips. On EUR/USD with a dollar account that is $10 a pip, so a 30-pip stop costs $300 per standard lot. The pip value calculator explains where that $10 comes from and why it differs on yen pairs and metals.
$200 of acceptable risk divided by $300 of risk per lot gives 0.67 lots, or 66,667 units of the base currency. Notice what happens when you widen the stop: at 60 pips the risk per lot doubles to $600 and the position halves to 0.33 lots. The cash at risk is unchanged. That invariance is what makes fixed-fractional sizing work — a wider stop does not mean a bigger loss, it means a smaller position.
Sizing each trade to 1% does not cap your portfolio risk at 1%. If you are long EUR/USD, long GBP/USD and short USD/CHF simultaneously, you are effectively holding one large short-dollar position across three tickets, and a dollar rally takes all three stops together. Treat correlated positions as a single trade for risk purposes, or divide your per-trade risk by the number of related tickets.
A correctly sized position can still be one your account cannot open. Run the result through the margin calculator to confirm the trade leaves you enough free margin, especially on a small account trading an instrument with a large contract size.
Cash at risk
risk amount = account balance x (risk % ÷ 100)Fix this percentage once and leave it alone. Changing it after a loss is how drawdowns turn into blow-ups.
Position size in lots
lots = risk amount ÷ (stop loss in pips x pip value per standard lot)The denominator is what one standard lot would cost you if the stop is hit, so the division simply asks how many of those you can afford.
Worked example — $10,000 account, 2% risk, 30-pip stop, EUR/USD
200 ÷ (30 x 10) = 0.67 lots (66,667 units)Widen the stop to 60 pips and the size halves to 0.33 lots. The cash at risk never changes — that is the whole point.
Most professional risk frameworks land between 0.5% and 2% of account equity per trade, and 1% is the common default. The exact number matters less than keeping it constant: a fixed fractional approach means your position size shrinks automatically during a losing streak and grows again as the account recovers. Risking 5% or more per trade means a run of six losses — entirely normal for a strategy that wins 50% of the time — costs you a quarter of the account.
Always before. Place the stop where your trade idea is objectively wrong — beyond the swing point, outside the range, past the level — and then size the position to fit it. Doing it the other way round, picking a lot size first and then squeezing the stop in to make the risk acceptable, produces stops that get hit by ordinary noise.
Brokers round lot sizes to a minimum increment, usually 0.01 lots on a micro account. If the calculator returns 0.673 lots you would enter 0.67 and accept slightly less risk than planned. Always round down rather than up — the difference is a rounding error in your favour.
No. The result is the position size that risks your chosen amount on the price move alone. Your real loss if the stop is hit will be slightly larger because you also pay the spread on entry, any commission on both sides, and overnight swap if the position is held past rollover. On a wide stop these costs are marginal; on a 10-pip scalp they can be a third of the risk, so build in a buffer.