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Risk Management in Trading: Setting Stop-Loss and Position Size?
Learn risk management in trading this February! Discover how to set stop-loss orders and position sizing for smarter trades.
Position size calculator
How large a position to take so that, if the stop loss is hit, you lose the share of the account you decided on in advance.
Result
Position size
0.40lots
40,000 units, rounded down to the nearest 0.01 lot.
- Money at risk
- 200.00 USD
- Pip value per standard lot
- 10.00 USD
- Exact size
- 0.4000 lots · 40,000 units
- In mini lots
- 4.00
- In micro lots
- 40.0
- Loss at the stop on 0.40 lots
- 200.00 USD
No exchange rate needed: the figures are already in USD.
Exchange rates: ECB reference rates, Oct 16. Reference rates are set once each business day, so results can differ slightly from a broker's live price. Everything is calculated in your browser; nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
How it is calculated
Start from the money you are prepared to lose on the trade: the balance multiplied by your risk percentage. Divide it by what the stop loss would cost on one standard lot — the stop distance in pips times the value of one pip per lot.
lots = (balance × risk %) ÷ (stop loss in pips × pip value per lot)
The answer is rounded down to 0.01 lot, the smallest step most brokers accept, so the rounded size never risks more than planned. A stop can be filled at a worse price than the one set — around news, or when the market reopens after a weekend — so a real loss can be larger than calculated.
Worked example
- A balance of 10,000 US dollars and a 2% risk gives 200 dollars at risk.
- With a 50-pip stop on EUR/USD, where a pip on one lot is worth 10 dollars, one lot would lose 500 dollars at the stop.
- 200 ÷ 500 = 0.4 lots, or 40,000 units.
Risk. These calculators do arithmetic on the figures you enter. They are not advice, and they leave out spreads, commission, financing and slippage. Trading leveraged currency products carries a high risk of loss. Read our financial disclaimer.