Position Sizing: How Much Should You Risk Per Trade?

Traders obsess over entries and ignore position sizing — which is backwards, because sizing is what decides whether a normal losing streak is a speed bump or a funeral. Here's how to think about how much to risk per trade.

Risk a fixed, small percentage — expressed as R

Define one unit of risk (1R) as a small, fixed fraction of your account, and risk exactly 1R per trade. Whether that's 0.5% or 1% or 2% depends on your strategy and your firm's rules, but the discipline is the same: consistent size, every trade, measured in R.

Why fixed sizing beats "conviction" sizing

Sizing up on trades you "feel good about" sounds smart and quietly wrecks accounts — because your confidence and your edge aren't the same thing, and your biggest bets tend to cluster exactly when you're most emotional. Fixed sizing removes the single most common way traders blow up.

Survive the losing streak you will have

Even a great system with a 50% win rate will hand you runs of five, six, seven losses in a row — that's just math. Ask: how many 1R losses in a row can my account (or my prop firm's drawdown) take? If the honest answer is "not many," your size is too big, regardless of how good your entries are.

Let the journal prove it

Once you size in R and log every trade, you can see your real worst losing streak, your average R per trade, and whether your sizing actually survives your own variance. That's the difference between hoping you're sized right and knowing it.

Get started with FundedView and log your first trade in under a minute.