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IADtrade tool

How much should you put in?

Most people don't lose money picking bad stocks — they lose it by putting too much into one idea, then panic-selling when it drops. Answer two quick questions and see the right amount for you.

Step 1 of 3
What are you buying?
Pick the closest match. The wilder the ride, the smaller the slice of your account it should get.
Step 2 of 3
What's the trade?
"It's at $70 and I think it's going to $130" — that's all we need. No target yet? Leave it blank.
We’ll grab today’s price for you.
No target entered — using a typical estimate for this kind of stock.
Step 3 of 3
If your account dropped, at what point would you panic and sell?
Be honest. This is the number that protects you.
Your panic point −30%
I'd panic earlyI can ride out anything
No edge, no trade. With zero expected return there's nothing to get paid for the risk — the right position size is zero. Do the research first.
Put this much into the position
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The idea

Why size like this?

Under the hood this runs the same position-sizing math professional traders use (it’s called the risk-constrained Kelly criterion, if you want to look it up). The logic comes down to three things:

01
Losses hurt more than gains help
Drop 50% and you need +100% just to get back to even. Over-sizing digs holes compounding can't climb out of.
02
There's an optimal size
Too small leaves money on the table. Too big and one bad stretch wrecks years of growth. The math finds the peak.
03
Your panic point is the limit
The size is shrunk until the odds of ever hitting your panic point stay under 10% — so you never sell the bottom.

Notice what happens when you switch what you’re buying: a stock that swings twice as hard deserves a quarter of the position size, not half. Wildness is punished harshly by the math — which is exactly why risky bets should be small ones, even when the upside looks bigger.

One more thing: this sizes a single position as your whole risky sleeve. In practice you'd spread that allocation across several researched names, which smooths your swings and lets you hold more in total. Sizing across a full portfolio is exactly the kind of thing we go deep on inside IADtrade.

Membership

Sizing is half the game. Picking is the other half.

IADtrade teaches research-driven swing and position trading — how to find the businesses worth sizing up in the first place, with real-time alerts, live trading, and 1:1 mentorship.

Join today