position-sizing.md

description
TradersPost offers several different features for dynamically and manually managing your position size.

Position Sizing

{% hint style="info" %} TradersPost does not verify you have the buying power for an order and we depend on the broker accepting or rejecting the order based on your available buying power and the rules each broker implements surrounding buying power. {% endhint %}

Amount per position

The Amount per position field allows you to configure a fixed dollar amount to be used to calculate the quantity for your entry order.

quantity = amountPerPosition / entryPrice

Risk per position

The Risk per position field allows you to configure a fixed risk dollar amount to be used to calculate the quantity for your entry order. This setting requires a stop loss to be configured.

difference = entryPrice > stopLossPrice
    ? entryPrice - stopLossPrice : stopLossPrice - entryPrice

quantity = riskPerPosition / difference 

Percent of portfolio value

The Percent of portfolio value allows you to dynamically calculate an amount per position to use based on your portfolio value. This calculation does not use your total buying power/margin. It is only your total portfolio value minus any unrealized profits or losses.

portfolioValue = portfolioValue - unrealized

amountPerPosition = portfolioValue * percentOfBuyingPower

quantity = amountPerPosition / entryPrice

Quantity

If you don't want to dynamically calculate a quantity, you can input a hardcoded fixed quantity to buy per signal in the Quantity field. TradersPost will pass this quantity directly to your broker.

Use signal quantity

In addition to being able to dynamically calculate quantity. You can simply pass your quantity to use in the signal. You must check the Use signal quantity checkbox in order to tell TradersPost you want to use the quantity from the signal.

Subtract exit quantity from signal quantity

Sometimes when you are flipping from one side to the other, for example long to short, you need to send the full quantity to exit the current open position and use the remaining quantity to enter a new position on the other side. Check the Subtract exit quantity from signal quantity checkbox to enable this behavior.

Now if you were long a quantity of 5, you can send a signal like the following to exit the 5 long and enter 3 short.

{
    "ticker": "TSLA",
    "action": "sell",
    "sentiment": "bearish",
    "quantity": 8
}

Use fractional quantity

By default TradersPost will round decimal quantity to a whole number. If you check the Use fractional quantity checkbox then we will pass the fractional quantity to the broker if the broker supports it. We will round the decimal to the number of decimal places the broker supports. You can read more about fractional shares here.

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