How many contracts, not how much profit
Most futures calculators tell you what a move was worth after the fact. This one answers the question you have before the trade: given this account, this risk limit and this stop, how many contracts can you actually take?
Futures Position Sizer
How many contracts your stop and your risk budget actually allow. Not a P&L calculator - this one answers “how many”.
One contract of ES risks $500.00 at this stop, which is more than your $250.00 budget. Widen the account, tighten the stop, or trade the micro version.
Contract specifications
| Symbol | Contract | Tick size | Tick value | Point value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES | E-mini S&P 500 | 0.25 | $12.50 | $50 |
| MES | Micro E-mini S&P 500 | 0.25 | $1.25 | $5 |
| NQ | E-mini Nasdaq-100 | 0.25 | $5.00 | $20 |
| MNQ | Micro E-mini Nasdaq | 0.25 | $0.50 | $2 |
| CL | Crude Oil | 0.01 | $10.00 | $1,000 |
| GC | Gold | 0.1 | $10.00 | $100 |
| ZB | 30-Year U.S. Treasury | 1/32 | $31.25 | $1,000 |
The formula
- dollar risk = account size x risk %
- points at risk = |entry - stop|
- ticks at risk = points at risk / tick size
- risk per contract = ticks at risk x tick value
- contracts = floor(dollar risk / risk per contract)
Why futures sizing catches people out
In equities, position size is intuitive: shares times price is what you paid, and the stop distance times shares is what you risk. Futures break that intuition, because the number that matters is not the price of the contract but the value of a tick. One point on the E-mini S&P is $50, but one point on the Micro is $5, and one point on crude oil is $1,000. A ten-point stop is therefore a $500 risk on one contract, a $50 risk on another and a $10,000 risk on a third, using identical-looking numbers on the chart. That is where accounts get destroyed - not through a bad thesis but through sizing a crude oil position as though it behaved like an index future. This calculator makes the tick value explicit and shows it in the results, so the figure doing the heavy lifting in your risk calculation is visible rather than assumed.
The rounding problem nobody mentions
Contracts are whole numbers, and that has a consequence most sizing advice glosses over. If your risk budget is $250 and one contract risks $150 at your stop, you can trade one contract, not 1.67. Your actual risk is $150, which is 40 percent less than you intended. Take that same setup with a tighter stop where one contract risks $80, and you can take three, for $240 of risk. The stop distance, not just the risk percentage, is quietly deciding how much of your budget you are able to deploy. This calculator shows both the budget and the actual risk at the contract count it produces, because the difference between them is where a nominal one-percent risk rule turns into a real risk of 0.4 percent on some trades and 0.96 percent on others. On a small account trading full-size contracts, the answer will often be zero contracts. That is not a bug in the calculation. It is the calculation telling you that a single contract at that stop exceeds the risk you said you were willing to take, and the honest responses are a wider account, a tighter stop, or the micro version of the contract.
Prop firm accounts change the constraint
If you are trading an evaluation account, position size is bounded by two separate things: your own risk-per-trade rule, and the firm's rules on daily loss and trailing drawdown. This calculator handles the first. The second is stricter and usually binds sooner, because a trailing drawdown measured against your high-water mark can put you out on a sequence of losses that your per-trade sizing would have survived comfortably. The practical approach is to size against whichever limit is tighter on that particular day: early in an evaluation, that is almost always the firm's drawdown rule rather than your percentage. Run the number here first, then check it against the room you have left before the trailing limit.
Frequently asked questions
The E-mini S&P 500 moves in 0.25-point ticks worth $12.50 each, so one full point is $50. The Micro E-mini (MES) is one tenth of that: a 0.25 tick is worth $1.25 and one point is $5. Both are in the specification table on this page, along with NQ, MNQ, CL, GC and ZB.
Because one contract at your stop distance risks more than your risk budget allows. With a $10,000 account risking 1 percent, your budget is $100, and a ten-point ES stop risks $500 on a single contract. The options are a smaller contract (MES risks $50 on that same stop), a tighter stop, or accepting more risk per trade - deliberately, rather than by not noticing.
The percentage can be the same; what changes is how easily you breach it. Futures leverage means a normal-looking stop can represent several percent of a small account on a single contract, so the sizing calculation matters more, not less. Many futures traders run 0.5 to 1 percent per trade for exactly that reason.
No. It sizes on stop distance alone. Round-turn costs on futures are small relative to typical stop risk, but they are not nothing over hundreds of trades, and they belong in your expectancy calculation rather than your sizing one.
TraderLog covers US equities and options
This calculator is free for anyone to use, futures traders included. The journal itself syncs Schwab and Interactive Brokers for stocks and options - futures broker sync is not supported today, so use this tool freely and check the supported markets before you sign up.