Position / Risk Calculator

How to use this position / risk calculator

The order matters, and it's the reverse of what many people think. First enter your account size — all the money in this trading account; then the risk-per-trade percentage, meaning "even if I read this trade wrong and hit the stop, I'll only accept losing this much," where 1% to 2% is the common, steady choice. Then enter the entry and stop price — where you plan to get in and the level where you admit you're wrong and exit. With all four in, the big number on the right is the notional position you should open on this trade — the order of magnitude you should actually commit.

The math behind it is humble: account size times risk percentage gives "the most money you're prepared to lose on this trade" — 1% of 2,000 is 20 USDT, say; then see what percentage the move from entry to stop is, 3% in this default example; finally divide the former by the latter to get the position — 20 over 3% is about 667 USDT. The tighter the stop (smaller distance), the bigger the position the same risk budget allows; the wider the stop, the smaller. The two comparison bars below show it plainly: the moment you hit the stop, what's lost is only a thin sliver of the account, with the vast majority sitting safely in place.

Why fix the risk before the position

When a beginner blows up, nine times out of ten it isn't from reading direction wrong — that's normal — it's that the wrong trade was sized too heavily. Go all-in, the stop gets hit, the account is halved on the spot, and then the "make it back" thinking starts, where the more you chase the heavier you go, a vicious circle. Fixing the risk first slams the door on this entirely: no matter how sure you are, a single trade loses only this much at most, and even ten wrong reads in a row still leave you most of an account to climb back with. This is what professional traders keep stressing: "risk management matters more than coin picking."

One often-overlooked point: this computes the notional position, not the margin. If you open leveraged futures, the margin actually tied up is the notional divided by the leverage, but your real risk exposure is the notional value together with the stop placement. For how leverage magnifies PnL and where the liquidation price is, pair this with the Leverage PnL / Risk Calculator and the Liquidation Price Calculator. For the overall framework of risk management, see Investopedia's explainer on risk management.