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Risk per trade calculator
What a risk percentage is worth in money, and — the part that changes minds — what it does to the account across a losing streak. The recovery arithmetic is not symmetric, and that asymmetry is the whole argument for small numbers.
The formula
Risk per trade = balance × risk %
Balance after n consecutive losses = balance × (1 − risk %)n
Gain needed to recover a drawdown d = 1 ÷ (1 − d) − 1
- The second line assumes fixed-fractional sizing — you re-risk a percentage of what is left, not of what you started with. That is what makes it a decay curve rather than a straight line.
- The third line is the one that does the damage, and it has nothing to do with trading. It is arithmetic.
Losing 50% and gaining 50% does not get you back. Losing 50% needs a 100% gain. Losing 75% needs 300%. This asymmetry is the entire reason risk limits exist.
What each risk level survives
A 10,000 account, fixed-fractional sizing, no wins in between. Read the last two columns first: they say how long each level of aggression takes to put you in trouble.
| Risk | Per trade | After 5 | After 10 | After 15 | After 20 | Losses to −20% | Losses to −50% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.5% | 50.00 USD | 9,752 −2.5% | 9,511 −4.9% | 9,276 −7.2% | 9,046 −9.5% | 45 | 139 |
| 1.0% | 100.00 USD | 9,510 −4.9% | 9,044 −9.6% | 8,601 −14.0% | 8,179 −18.2% | 23 | 69 |
| 2.0% | 200.00 USD | 9,039 −9.6% | 8,171 −18.3% | 7,386 −26.1% | 6,676 −33.2% | 12 | 35 |
| 3.0% | 300.00 USD | 8,587 −14.1% | 7,374 −26.3% | 6,333 −36.7% | 5,438 −45.6% | 8 | 23 |
| 5.0% | 500.00 USD | 7,738 −22.6% | 5,987 −40.1% | 4,633 −53.7% | 3,585 −64.2% | 5 | 14 |
| 10.0% | 1,000.00 USD | 5,905 −41.0% | 3,487 −65.1% | 2,059 −79.4% | 1,216 −87.8% | 3 | 7 |
The rows worth staring at are 1% and 5%. Ten losses at 1% is a 9.6% drawdown — an uncomfortable fortnight. Ten losses at 5% is a 40.1% drawdown, which needs a 67% gain to undo and will end most accounts, because almost nobody keeps executing a plan from that far down.
Why drawdowns are asymmetric
| Drawdown | Gain needed to recover | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| −5% | +5.3% | Recoverable inside a normal month. |
| −10% | +11.1% | Recoverable inside a normal month. |
| −20% | +25.0% | A quarter of hard work, and most prop-firm accounts are already dead here. |
| −30% | +42.9% | Needs a better run than the one that caused it. |
| −40% | +66.7% | You must now double what is left just to return to flat. |
| −50% | +100.0% | You must now double what is left just to return to flat. |
| −60% | +150.0% | Recovery is no longer the realistic outcome. |
| −75% | +300.0% | Recovery is no longer the realistic outcome. |
| −90% | +900.0% | Recovery is no longer the realistic outcome. |
What the number is actually for
Risk per trade is the one setting that decides whether a positive edge ever gets the chance to arrive. An account with a genuine edge and 8% risk per trade will frequently die before the edge pays, because the losing streaks that any edge produces are large enough to end it. The edge was never the problem.
It is also the setting that makes every other measurement meaningful. Once risk is constant, results become comparable in R, your expectancy stops being contaminated by position sizing, and a bad month can be read as ordinary variance rather than a crisis.
The number this page cannot tell you is what you have actually been risking, which is usually not what you think. That is in your statement.
Questions
How much should I risk per trade?
There is no number that is correct for everyone, and anyone who gives you one without asking about your win rate, your payoff ratio and your tolerance for a bad month is guessing. What the arithmetic below does say is that the cost of being wrong is asymmetric: halving your risk roughly halves your return but far more than halves your chance of a drawdown you cannot recover from. Most professional guidance lands between 0.5% and 2% for that reason, and prop-firm rules are usually written to force you into the same range.
Does a 20-trade losing streak actually happen?
At a 50% win rate, a run of 10 losses appears roughly once in every thousand trades — which is a few years of ordinary trading, not a freak event. At a 35% win rate it is far more common than that. The streak table is not a worst case; it is a case you should expect to meet.
Is fixed-percentage risk the same as fixed-lot?
No, and the difference matters in exactly the situation you care about. Fixed-percentage sizing shrinks the position as the account falls, so the drawdown decelerates and mathematically cannot reach zero. Fixed-lot sizing keeps the position constant, so each loss is a larger share of what is left and the decline accelerates. This calculator models fixed-percentage sizing throughout.
Your statement already knows your real risk per trade
Enter the planned risk on your trades and TapeSheet converts every result into an R-multiple — which is where you find out whether the 1% you believe you risk is the 1% you actually risked, and which losses ran past it. Free, no signup, and the file never leaves your device.
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