Calculate how many lots to trade based on your account balance, risk tolerance, and stop loss distance. Prevents over-leveraging — the most common beginner mistake.
The 1% rule means never risking more than 1% of your account balance on a single trade. On a $10,000 account that is $100 per trade. Professional traders rarely risk more than 1–2%. Risking 3%+ per trade means a losing streak of 10 trades could wipe out 30% of your capital.
A standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency. A mini lot (0.10) is 10,000 units. A micro lot (0.01) is 1,000 units. Most retail traders start with 0.01–0.10 lots. This calculator returns the result in standard lots — multiply by 10 for mini lots or by 100 for micro lots.
Yes — always. Wider stop losses require smaller position sizes to keep the same dollar risk. A 50-pip stop requires half the lot size of a 25-pip stop for the same account risk. Never widen your stop loss without also reducing your position size.
Leverage does not change your optimal position size — that is determined by your risk percentage and stop loss. Leverage changes how much margin (collateral) you need to hold the position. Using more leverage does not automatically mean more risk per trade, but it does mean more margin efficiency.