A lot is the unit MetaTrader 5 uses to size a trade. On forex, 1.00 lot, a standard lot, is 100,000 units of the base currency; 0.10 lots, a mini lot, is 10,000 units; and 0.01 lots, a micro lot, is 1,000 units. Risk scales in a straight line with lot size: on EURUSD a pip is worth $10 at 1.00 lot, $1 at 0.10 and $0.10 at 0.01.
Choosing a lot size is therefore the same decision as choosing how much a trade can lose. This post covers what each lot size means in units and dollars, why one lot is not the same thing on every symbol, how to work out a lot size from a stop distance and a risk budget, and what the Max. Exposure rule on a WhitePips CFD account looks like when you translate it into lots.
What is a lot in forex?
A currency pair is quoted as one currency against another, and the lot is counted in the first one, the base currency. One lot of EURUSD is €100,000; one lot of GBPJPY is £100,000; one lot of USDCAD is $100,000.
The dollar value of that position, its notional, is the units multiplied by the price when the base currency is not the dollar. With EURUSD at 1.1000, one lot is €100,000, or $110,000 of notional. When the dollar is the base currency, as in USDJPY, one lot is simply $100,000 of notional.
You never pay the notional. The platform sets aside margin, a fraction of the notional decided by the account's leverage, and the profit or loss is the price change multiplied by the units. Leverage decides how much you can open; the lot size decides what each move is worth.
What are standard, mini and micro lots?
On MT5 they are not separate products. They are decimal volumes typed into the same order window:
- Standard lot, 1.00: 100,000 units. $10 per pip on a USD-quoted pair such as EURUSD.
- Mini lot, 0.10: 10,000 units. $1 per pip.
- Micro lot, 0.01: 1,000 units. $0.10 per pip.
Any size in between is allowed in steps of the symbol's volume step, which on most MT5 forex symbols is 0.01. A 0.37-lot trade is 37,000 units and $3.70 a pip on EURUSD. The Volume min, Volume max and Volume step lines in the symbol's specification show what your server accepts.
On pairs not quoted in dollars the pip value per lot differs, from about $6.67 on a yen pair with USDJPY at 150 to $13 on EURGBP with GBPUSD at 1.30. The scaling is the same: a tenth of the lot, a tenth of the pip value. The pip value calculator gives the figure for any pair.
Is one lot the same on gold, indices and crypto?
No. A lot is one contract, and each symbol defines its own contract. On most MT5 servers one lot of gold, XAUUSD, is 100 troy ounces, so a $1 move in the gold price is $100 per lot. On index, energy and crypto CFDs the contract size is set per symbol: one lot might be one unit of the index, or a fixed number of barrels or coins. Check the contract size in the symbol's specification in MT5 before you trade anything new.
The practical consequence is that one lot is not a fixed amount of risk. One lot of EURUSD moving 50 pips is $500. One lot of gold moving $5 is also $500, and gold can move $5 in a few minutes around a data release. Size each symbol from its own value per point, never from the lot size you use elsewhere.
How does lot size scale risk?
In a straight line. Double the lots and you double the pip value, the loss at the stop and the profit at the target. A 30-pip stop on EURUSD costs:
- 0.01 lots: $3.
- 0.10 lots: $30.
- 0.50 lots: $150.
- 1.00 lot: $300.
- 2.00 lots: $600.
Set that against a loss limit. On a $10K Edge 1 Step the Max Daily Loss is $400 (4%). At 1.00 lot of EURUSD, 40 pips against you reaches it; at 0.10 lots it takes 400 pips. On a $2.5K Edge 1 Step the Max Daily Loss is $100, which one lot of EURUSD loses in 10 pips. On small accounts micro lots are not a beginner's setting. They are the only way the arithmetic works.
How do I choose a lot size from a stop and a risk budget?
Start from the money, not the lots. Three inputs decide the size:
- Risk budget: the dollars you accept losing if the stop is hit, normally a small share of the account and a smaller share of the daily limit.
- Stop distance: where the trade idea is wrong, in pips or in dollars of price, taken from the chart.
- Value per pip per lot: $10 on USD-quoted pairs, different elsewhere, and $100 per $1 of price on a 100-ounce gold contract.
Lots = risk budget ÷ (stop distance × value per pip per lot). Round down to the volume step, never up.
A worked example on a $25K Edge 2 Step, where the Max Daily Loss is $1,125 (4.5%) and the Max Loss is $2,250 (9%). Say the plan is to risk 0.5% of the account, $125, per trade:
- EURUSD, 25-pip stop: $125 divided by (25 × $10) is 0.50 lots.
- EURUSD, 40-pip stop: $125 divided by $400 is 0.3125, so 0.31 lots.
- USDJPY at 150.00, 25-pip stop: each pip on one lot is about $6.67, so 25 pips is about $166.67 a lot, and the answer is 0.75 lots.
- XAUUSD, $8 stop: $125 divided by ($8 × 100) is 0.156, so 0.15 lots.
Notice what moves and what does not. The risk stays at $125 on every trade; the lot size moves with the stop and the symbol. At that risk it would take nine full losses to reach the daily limit and eighteen to reach the Max Loss. That room for error is the point of the method.
The position size calculator does this division for any symbol, and the post on sizing against the limit covers how to choose the risk budget itself.
What is Max. Exposure, and what is it in lots?
Every WhitePips CFD plan caps the combined notional value of all open positions as a share of the balance. Every open position counts towards it. The cap is published per account size and is the same on every CFD plan that offers that size:
- $2.5K: $125,000 (5,000%)
- $5K: $200,000 (4,000%)
- $10K: $300,000 (3,000%)
- $25K: $625,000 (2,500%)
- $50K: $1,000,000 (2,000%)
- $100K: $1,250,000 (1,250%)
- $200K: $2,000,000 (1,000%)
To read it in lots, divide the cap by the notional of one lot. With EURUSD at 1.1000 one lot is $110,000, so a $50K account's $1,000,000 holds about nine lots of EURUSD at once, and a $25K account's $625,000 about five and a half. USDJPY is $100,000 a lot, so the $50K cap is ten lots. Gold is 100 times the gold price per lot: if gold is at $3,000 an ounce, one lot is $300,000 of notional, and three lots use most of a $1,000,000 cap.
Going over the cap is a warning, not a strike. If the account is in profit at that moment, the profit is reset to the starting balance, and profitable days already earned are kept. A second breach closes the account. The post on Max Exposure and floating loss goes through how that plays out.
A lot size chosen from a modest risk budget sits far below the cap. Reaching Max. Exposure means holding several large positions at the same time, or sizing from the cap rather than from the stop.
Which lot size is right for my account?
There is no lot size that is right for an account size, only one that is right for a trade. The same $50K account might trade 2.00 lots of EURUSD with a 25-pip stop and 0.25 lots of gold with a $20 stop, and both carry $500 of risk. What stays fixed is the dollar risk, chosen once from the account's limits; what changes is the lot size, worked out each time from the stop.
A few checks help before any order goes in. Is the dollar loss at the stop a figure you have decided in advance? Would three or four such losses in a row still leave the daily limit intact? Does the notional, added to what is already open, fit inside Max. Exposure? If any answer is no, the lot size is wrong, however good the setup looks.
Leveraged trading can lose money fast, and the lot size is where that speed is set. Choose it from the loss you can accept, then check it against the figures on your plan and in the trading rules.