You choose how Wildflower sizes each trade, and you type the number. Nothing is filled in for you.
Four ways to size a trade
- Dollar amount per trade. Every trade is sized so that hitting the stop loses your maximum dollar risk. A wider stop means fewer contracts, a tighter stop more.
- Number of contracts. Every trade takes the number you set.
- Percentage of account. Every trade risks the percentage you set of your balance at the start of the trading day (5pm US Central).
- Percentage of remaining drawdown. Every trade risks the percentage you set of the room left, at the start of the day, between your balance and your prop account's loss limit as Wildflower holds it. A loss limit that follows your highest balance during the day cannot be used.
The two percentage methods can be backtested on a strategy with one setup. They cannot run on a live account.
Your maximum dollar risk
Whichever method you choose, maximum dollar risk per trade is the most any one trade may risk. Any larger size is cut to what the maximum allows. If not even one contract fits, the trade is skipped.
Each account holds one position at a time, whatever the max open trades box says.
Limits that can make the count smaller
- Maximum contracts. A ceiling on contracts, for a limit your broker or firm has set.
- Sizing floor per contract. A minimum risk per contract, so a very tight stop cannot produce a huge count.
- Maximum risk multiple. A ceiling on the dollars a trade may carry after its stop widens, as a multiple of your risk per trade. The count shrinks to fit.
- Risk overshoot percent. How far a trade's risk may go past your risk per trade. Left blank, the maximum risk multiple applies, or else your risk per trade. The count rounds down.
- Entry slippage buffer. Ticks added to the stop distance when working out the count, so a fill that far past the entry stays within your risk. Left empty, Wildflower uses your market's real broker fills.
- Staged risk. Lowers your risk per trade while a condition you set is true, and raises it back when it is not. If not even one contract fits the lower figure, the trade is skipped.
- Your firm's maximum-loss line. No trade may lose more than the room left above it. How it works.
When a setting moves the stop first
A minimum stop distance set to widen moves the stop out before the order goes, and the count is worked out on that wider stop. The same happens when a confirmation candle moves the entry, or when Wildflower enters at market because price passed a stop order's level. If not even one contract fits your risk, the trade is not taken.
A waiting order already at your broker is never made bigger. When it fills, it is sized again on the wider stop and on any staged step-down since it was placed. Wildflower closes the extra contracts before moving your stop out.
When the fill slips
A market order that fills worse than the signal price puts more at risk than you asked for. When the broker reports the fill, the count is worked out again from that fill to your stop. Any contracts above the new number are closed at market. The stop is never moved. If not even one contract fits your risk at that distance, the whole position is closed.
An order filled in pieces is sized on the average price.
This only ever makes a position smaller.
What you will see in Activity
When sizing stopped a trade, the Activity page's Everything else tab says so: zero contracts, not enough margin, too close to your firm's maximum-loss line, or a stop wider than your settings allow.
What can go wrong
Risk per trade limits the loss if the stop is hit. It is not a promise: if price jumps past the stop, a trade can lose more.