Risk Calculator

Multiply your stop loss in ticks by the tick value to get risk per contract, then divide your risk budget by that number. For example, risking 1% of a $50,000 account ($500) with a 20-tick stop on ES (each tick worth $12.50) means each contract risks $250 — so you can trade 2 contracts.

A common guideline is 0.5-2% per trade, but on prop accounts the real constraint is the drawdown limit, not the account size. A $50,000 account with a $2,000 trailing drawdown effectively gives you $2,000 of capital — risking 1% of account size ($500) means just 4 consecutive losses can breach the account. Many funded traders therefore risk 0.25-0.5% per trade.

Divide your remaining drawdown by your risk per trade. Risking $500 per trade against a $2,000 drawdown limit survives only 4 straight losses — a streak that happens regularly even to profitable traders. Halving the risk to $250 doubles your survival to 8 losses, which is why funded traders size smaller than the classic 1-2% rule suggests.

A tick is the smallest price increment a futures contract can move, and each contract has a fixed dollar value per tick. On ES (E-mini S&P 500) a tick is 0.25 points worth $12.50; on NQ it is 0.25 points worth $5.00; on CL (Crude Oil) it is $0.01 worth $10.00. Micro contracts like MES and MNQ have one-tenth the tick value.

The drawdown limit. Prop firm accounts fail when the drawdown is hit, not when the balance reaches zero, so your usable capital is the distance to the drawdown — often only 2-5% of the nominal account size. This calculator factors in your drawdown limit to show the maximum contracts you can safely trade.

Switch to micro contracts. Micros (MES, MNQ, MCL, MGC) are one-tenth the size of the E-mini equivalents, letting you keep the same setups and stop distances while cutting dollar risk by 90% — or fine-tune size in steps of one-tenth. Ten micros equal one mini, so you can scale between them as your buffer grows.