XAUUSD position size calculator
Stop distance decides size — never the other way around. Enter your balance, the risk you accept and the distance to your stop; the calculator returns the lot size, the money at risk, the spread cost and the margin your broker will hold.
How to read it
Four numbers decide a gold trade
Balance, risk percentage, stop distance and contract size. Three of them are yours; the fourth is your broker's and most traders never check it. If you only want to know what one lot is worth, use the gold lot size converter instead.
- Risk is a decision, not a result. 1% of a $10,000 account is $100 — the lot size is whatever makes that true at your stop.
- The stop is fixed first. Choosing the lot size first and the stop afterwards is how accounts die.
- Spread is part of the risk. At $0.30 on gold and 100 oz per lot, every 0.01 lot costs $0.30 to open and close.
- Gaps override everything. A stop is where you exit by choice; a gap is where you exit at whatever price prints.
Worked example
A $10,000 account risking 1% ($100) with an entry at 4150.00 and a stop at 4132.00 has a stop distance of $18 per ounce. With a 100 oz contract, one lot risks $1,800 — so the correct size is 100 ÷ 1,800 × 100 oz ≈ 0.06 lots (about 5.6 oz). Margin at 1:100 on roughly $23,000 of notional is about $230, and the round-trip spread at $0.30 costs about $1.70.
Two things that example does not capture: slippage on a fast print, and the swap you pay if the trade is held overnight. Both come out of the same $100. That is why the desk quotes stops in dollars per ounce and sizes from there — see today's levels, and read the risk disclaimer before using any of it.