Lesson 5 of 12 · 6 min
Position Size for a Prop Account
Risk in dollars against your drawdown, contracts from your stop, and micros vs minis.
How much you risk on each trade decides how many mistakes your evaluation can survive. Size from the stop, never from the feeling.
Risk against the drawdown
Think in drawdowns, not account size. With $2,000 of room, a $500 loss is a quarter of your evaluation. Many traders keep each trade to a small slice of the drawdown — say 5–10% — so a losing streak can't end it.
Contracts from your stop
Contracts = dollars you'll risk ÷ (stop distance in points × the contract's point value). Decide the stop first; the size follows.
Example
Risk $200, stop 10 points away on MES ($5 a point): $50 a contract, so 4 contracts.
The same trade on ES ($50 a point) risks $500 for one contract — too much. Use the micro.
Micros vs minis
Micro contracts are a tenth of the mini: MES is $5 a point (ES $50), MNQ $2 (NQ $20). They let you size precisely on a small drawdown.
How often you need to be right
Risking $1 to make $2 (1:2 risk/reward), you break even winning about one trade in three, before fees. Bigger targets need fewer wins; tighter targets need more.
TradeCompass turns this into your own rules: it checks every trade against them and warns you before you break one.
Start freeCheck yourself
Educational content only. Not financial advice, not a buy/sell signal, no guaranteed results.