How TickerAI sizes a trade

The single most common way retail traders blow up is not picking the wrong direction. It is picking the right direction with the wrong size. TickerAI takes sizing out of your hands, on purpose.

The rule

You set one number in Settings → Trading: the maximum percent of your balance you are willing to lose on a single trade. One percent is the default. Everything else follows from that.

The arithmetic

For an idea with an entry and a stop:

1. Cash at risk = balance × risk percent. On a $10,000 account at 1% that is $100.
2. Stop distance = entry − stop, in price.
3. Risk per lot = (stop distance ÷ tick size) × tick value. This comes from the broker's contract specification, which we read live. It already accounts for contract size and the profit currency, so it is right for gold at 100 ounces a lot, for a JPY pair, and for an index CFD.
4. Lots = cash at risk ÷ risk per lot, rounded down to the broker's lot step and clamped to its minimum and maximum.

If even the minimum lot risks more than your limit, TickerAI refuses and says so, rather than quietly rounding up.

What the estimate ignores

Commission, swap, spread widening at news, and slippage. In a fast market a stop can fill well past its price. The size on the card is a ceiling under normal conditions, not a promise.

Why round down

Because the risk limit is yours, and a tool that nudges it upward "just a little" is not respecting it. Every rounding decision in the sizing code goes in the direction of less risk.