Turn a hunch into a number
Retail trading loses not on the forecast but on the arithmetic: a position that is too large, risk that is worked out wrongly and costs nobody added in. These procedures are deliberately short — they are meant to be doable in a minute, not impressive.
Position size calculator — the 1–2% rule
4 steps
One number decides whether you risk 1% or 10% of the account: size comes from equity, risk % and distance to invalidation. Without it, a setup is a guess.
Result in R-multiples
3 steps
An R-multiple measures every trade in units of risk (1R), not money: compare setups across account sizes and keep the journal consistent.
Pips → PLN (Polish złoty)
3 steps
Find out what 1 pip is worth in your account currency — JPY pairs are not calculated the same way as EURUSD. “50 pips” is a concrete risk in PLN.
CFD broker checklist
5 steps
Compare brokers on five dimensions: supervision, KID, leverage, PLN (Polish złoty) deposits, demo account — not the bonus or a “friendly interface”.
Order of use
These four steps have a fixed order. The reverse — position first, risk second — is the most common route to an account that looks good only on paper.
- 01 Turn the stop into a cash amount Points to the stop times the value of a point for your position. Only then is 1R an amount, not a number pulled from the air.
- 02 Turn the amount into position size Equity times 1–2% gives you a risk budget; position size follows from the distance to the stop. Never the other way round.
- 03 Record the result in R Profit and loss in units of risk let you compare trades of different sizes and work out expectancy from a sample.
- 04 Run the checklist before you enter Cost, swap, leverage, the compensation-scheme limit: the points that settle the outcome before the setup has a chance to work.
What these tools do not calculate
- They do not know your broker’s swap or commission — you take those numbers from the fee schedule and enter them yourself.
- They do not model slippage for you: they take the assumption you give them and show its consequence.
- They do not judge the quality of a setup or the market context. That is the job of the journal and the sample, not the calculator.
- They do not forecast. The number on the screen is a consequence of your assumptions, not a prediction of the market.
Five arithmetic mistakes that ruin the result
- Risk calculated from the wrong base
- The risk percentage is calculated from account equity, not from the notional value of the position or from the margin deposit. Swap the base for notional and you get a position several times larger than the plan assumed.
- A stop in price instead of in points
- A level in points is immune to a change in the instrument’s quotes; a stop written as “price 1.0842” means something different a month later. The distance to the stop is a number of points.
- Cost left out of R
- Spread, commission and swap eat part of the profit. In short setups they can flip the sign of the result, so cost goes into the calculation before you judge the strategy.
- Two currencies in one calculation
- A stop in dollars, equity in PLN (Polish złoty) — with no conversion at the exchange rate, the result compares two different units and looks better than it is.
- Rounding position size up
- The calculator returns a size that we round down. Rounding up means more risk than planned — exactly what the tool is meant to protect you from.
Who writes this and how we check it
The materials are written and verified by Redakcja Kurs Tradera — the rules are described on about the site: every number has a source, and we show gaps openly. Report a factual error via contact — corrections are described in the content.