The futures position-size formula
Risk budget = account balance × risk percentage. Risk per contract = stop distance in ticks × tick value. Contracts = floor(risk budget ÷ risk per contract). Rounding down matters: a partial contract is not possible, and rounding up silently breaks the risk limit you chose before the trade.
Tick value is the detail that changes everything
Micro, mini, and standard contracts can represent the same market with very different tick values. Read the contract specification or your broker's symbol details rather than guessing. For a contract worth $5 per tick and a 20-tick stop, one contract risks $100 before commissions and slippage. A $10,000 account risking 1% has a $100 budget, so the result is one contract—not ten.
Use the result as a pre-trade guardrail
Calculate size after choosing a technically meaningful stop, not before. If the calculator returns zero contracts, the stop is too wide for the account and risk rule; do not force a trade by increasing leverage. You can reduce the stop only when the market structure supports it, or wait until your account and plan support the instrument.
The calculator ignores commissions, exchange fees, spread and slippage. Add a buffer in your own plan, especially around news and thin sessions. Edgelog can then record the live result in your journal through MT4/MT5 sync or an import so the planned risk can be compared with what actually happened.
Keep futures risk separate in your review
Tag the contract, session and setup in your journal. Weekly review should compare planned risk, realized risk, win rate, profit factor and drawdown. The number is useful only when it is applied consistently across a meaningful sample of trades.
This tool is educational planning math, not investment advice. Futures are leveraged and losses can exceed expectations when execution differs from the plan.