Risk per trade is the share of your balance you lose if a signal hits its full stop. It is set by your lot size, not by the signal: the position sizing guide turns any percentage into a lot size, and the lot size calculator does it in ten seconds. This guide is about choosing the percentage itself.
What a losing streak costs at each size
Every provider has runs of stops, ours included. The table shows what a run of stops in a row costs at each risk size, with each stop taken as a share of the balance left after the previous one, and the gain needed after ten of them to get back to where you started.
| Risk per trade | 3 stops | 5 stops | 10 stops | Gain to recover 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.5% | 1.5% | 2.5% | 4.9% | 5.1% |
| 1% | 3.0% | 4.9% | 9.6% | 10.6% |
| 2% | 5.9% | 9.6% | 18.3% | 22.4% |
| 3% | 8.7% | 14.1% | 26.3% | 35.6% |
| 5% | 14.3% | 22.6% | 40.1% | 67.0% |
Read across a row, then down a column. At 1%, ten stops in a row is a 9.6% drawdown that needs a 10.6% gain to undo. At 3%, the same ten stops is 26.3%, and getting back needs 35.6%: the hole is deeper and the climb out is proportionally longer, because every recovery trade is sized from a smaller balance. Doubling the risk does not double the pain of a streak. It more than doubles the recovery.
Notice also that five stops at 2% cost almost exactly what ten stops cost at 1%. Doubling your risk roughly halves the run of stops you can absorb for the same damage.
How long a run of stops really gets
Ten in a row is a stress test, not a forecast. The losing streaks guide uses one stop in eight as a planning figure, not a promise. On that figure, with signals independent of each other, a run of three stops is likely somewhere in a thousand signals and a run of four is possible; ten in a row would almost never happen by chance alone. What makes long runs likelier than that arithmetic says is clustering: signals on correlated pairs share one idea, so a day when the dollar moves against the desk can stop out EUR/USD, GBP/USD and gold together.
Our own replayed month, 24 August to 21 September 2026, had 3 full stops in 79 resolved signals, and two of them came from signals posted 67 seconds apart that both finished as full stops. That was a good month. Plan your size on a bad one.
Choosing your number
- 0.5%. For a funded account with a daily loss limit, for the first month with any new provider, and for anyone who checks the account every hour. Slow, and very hard to break.
- 1%. The sound default for following signals by hand or by copier. A ten-stop run is under a tenth of the account, and the recovery needs barely more than the loss.
- 2%. Only after you have been through a real losing streak at 1% and kept to your rule. A ten-stop run is about a fifth of the account.
- 3% and above. A five-stop run, far likelier than ten, takes 14% of the account; a ten-stop run takes over a quarter, and the climb back takes longer still. This is sizing by hope rather than by rule.
Two more checks before you settle it:
- Count correlated signals together. Two signals at 1% each on EUR/USD and GBP/USD are close to one 2% bet on the dollar. If the desk posts several signals on the same idea, your real risk is the total.
- Write the number down and size every signal from it. A fixed lot size is not a risk rule: the same 0.10 lots risks three times as much on a 75 pip stop as on a 25 pip one.
Funded accounts
A funded account has two limits that end it: a daily loss limit and an overall drawdown limit, both in percent. Plan the day to stay well inside the daily one. The funded account guide budgets 3% of a 5% limit across five signals, which is 0.6% a trade, and counts open trades too when the firm measures the limit on equity. At 2% a trade, by contrast, the third stop of the day breaches a 5% limit.
Never raise it to win back a loss
The moment a risk rule usually breaks is the day after a bad run, when doubling up looks like the quickest way back. The table above shows why it is not: a bigger size meets the next ordinary streak with a smaller balance. If you want to change your number, change it on a calm weekend, in writing, and apply it from the next signal on.
On Forexero signals
Our signals carry a stop from the first message, so every one of them can be sized to your number before you enter. If you copy them, the Cloud Copier has a Risk % mode that sizes each trade so its stop costs the percentage you set. The copier starts on a fixed 0.01 lot, and the Risk % box defaults to 2.0, so set your own number before the first signal arrives. Every closed signal, stops included, is on the results page, so you can count real runs of stops before you choose.
See the signals before you pay for anything
Every closed VIP signal is on the results page with its entry, stop, targets and outcome, losses included.
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