I don't understand how to set up leverage and volume on MT4

[XSevenX]

I guess I didn't pay proper attention in the school but I don't understand how all of this works and what I should be doing with these numbers. I don't want to risk any more than 2% of my balance. How would I go about making MT4 only drop 2% every trade I make? Should I even touch the volume perimeter in the order window? Thanks ^^

[MitchellForex]

I guess I didn't pay proper attention in the school but I don't understand how all of this works and what I should be doing with these numbers. I don't want to risk any more than 2% of my balance. How would I go about making MT4 only drop 2% every trade I make? Should I even touch the volume perimeter in the order window? Thanks ^^

Volume is where you want to be, so dont run away from it.

You just have to learn the general volume numbers, so "1" in the volume window is a standard lot, which equates to $100,000 or $10 per pip.

Thats the standard you can go off to work out the rest in your head (unless you are not that great at maths)

for a quick example, Say you had $1500 in an account and you wanted to only risk 1% and your usual stop loss for your strategy was 15 pips. This means that you can lose $15 (1% of 1500),

You would set your volume to 0.1 ($10,000 trading/$1 per pip), so that when you lost 15 pips, you would lose $15 and only 1% of your balance.

Leverage is already set up depending on what you put on the volume, so you don't have to worry about that.

That was a quick example with poor explanation, if you are still struggling after that. Im sure one of the regulars here that has time off christmas would be happy to answer in more depth :P

[XSevenX]

Thanks for the advice.

I found a lot size calculator. It calculates how large you should set your volume to get whatever risk % you want. It uses your choice risk % and choice stop loss as variables. I left stop loss at 30pips (I haven't developed a system, just breaking myself in), I have my risk at 2%. Is this all you need to determine your desired lot size?

I'm not sure how stop loss or leverage fits into the equation determining your lot size. It seems stop loss is meaningful, but why not leverage? If I were to raise my leverage then surely I'm risking more right?

[ForexFraternity Blog]

you need to make use of the baby pips calculator the risk management you are talking about is called fixed fractional position sizing if you want to read up more about the topic

[MitchellForex]

Thanks for the advice.

I found a lot size calculator. It calculates how large you should set your volume to get whatever risk % you want. It uses your choice risk % and choice stop loss as variables. I left stop loss at 30pips (I haven't developed a system, just breaking myself in), I have my risk at 2%. Is this all you need to determine your desired lot size?

I'm not sure how stop loss or leverage fits into the equation determining your lot size. It seems stop loss is meaningful, but why not leverage? If I were to raise my leverage then surely I'm risking more right?

Yes thats all you need

Stop loss determines everything about your lot size if you are trading with a max risk element to your strategy.

All I was saying is dont worry about your 'leverage' because its automatically calculated depending on your volume size/balance, you do not need to be worry about, 'oh I will enter 20:1 leverage this trade' because its not a variable you have to worry about when taking trades, the only thing you should be worrying about is your risk % and stop loss which then calculates your volume

[Mr Gone]

You need to stoudy a little more, kinda complicated to answer that.