Most blown accounts are not caused by weak analysis. They are caused by a position that was too large for the stop. Get sizing right and a run of losing trades still leaves you comfortably inside your limits. Get it wrong and a single trade can take you to the edge. The good news is that the maths is simple, and once you size from your risk you never have to guess again.

There are three inputs, and you set them in this order.

Then size the trade.

Your risk per trade is the dial that protects you from a losing streak. Keep it small enough that several losses in a row cannot reach your daily drawdown or your maximum drawdown.

A simple way to think about it: if your daily drawdown gives you a fixed amount of room before the day stops, and you risk a small fraction of your balance per trade, you can take many losses before you ever approach that line. Risk a large fraction and two or three poor trades end your day, or your account. Your exact drawdown figures are shown on your dashboard and on each product page, since they differ by product.

One point matters for sizing: your drawdown is measured on equity, which includes the open profit and loss of any position you are holding. A trade moving against you counts towards your limit while it is still open, not only once you close it. Sizing from a fixed money risk keeps that floating loss inside the room your limits allow.

Your daily drawdown resets at 00:00 UTC, so a controlled risk per trade also means a single rough session does not have to follow you into the next day.

Once an account is funded, there is a hard ceiling on what any one trade is allowed to lose, built into the rules so that an oversized position cannot slip through. The instant routes are funded from the outset, so the cap applies from your first trade. On One Step and Two Step it applies once you reach the funded stage. Your position size must keep the worst case under that cap.

The cap is measured against your initial balance. During the One Step and Two Step evaluation there is no per-trade cap, though your daily and maximum drawdown limits still apply throughout. If your sizing maths ever produces a worst-case loss above the cap, the lot is too large. Lower it until the stop loss times the position stays under the limit. Treat the cap as the absolute maximum, not your normal trade size. A sensible risk per trade usually sits well below it.

Say you have a $100,000 account and you decide to risk 0.5% on a trade, which is $500. Your chart tells you the stop should sit 50 pips away. Suppose the pip value works out to $10 per standard lot for the instrument (your dashboard shows the exact figure).

Run the formula: $500 / (50 pips x $10) = $500 / $500 = 1 lot. If you hit the stop, you lose $500, exactly the amount you chose, and far below any single-trade cap.

Now widen the stop to 100 pips for the same $500 risk: $500 / (100 x $10) = 0.5 lots. Same money at risk, half the size, because the stop is twice as far. That is the whole idea. You move the lot size, not your risk.