Trade Plan Builder: Entry, Stop, Targets & Size

About the Trade Plan Builder: Entry, Stop, Targets & Size

Write down a trade before you place it. This planner works out how many shares, contracts, lots or coins keep the loss at your stop to the amount you chose to risk, with the costs and the slippage counted in, and then what each part of the plan does: the money at risk (1R), the break-even exit, the profit and the R multiple of up to four staged targets, and the loss if the price gaps through your stop overnight.

The stop can be a price, a percentage or a multiple of the average true range (ATR), typed or worked out from prices you paste. The plan rounds the size down to your market’s step: Japan’s trading unit of 100 shares, a futures contract with its multiplier and tick, forex lots of 100,000 units, or a coin’s quantity step, and it can cap the position at a share of your equity or at the margin you have. Every level is yours: the tool prints the results of your own rule (“your stop: entry − 2 × ATR”), never a level of its own.

Add your own checklist (it starts empty) and, with a pass or after unlocking this result, print the plan to keep beside your screen. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Common uses

• Size a share, futures, forex or crypto trade so a stop costs the amount you chose, costs included.
• Split a position into staged targets and see what each part adds in money and R.
• See what a gap through the stop would cost before you hold a position overnight.
• Keep your own pre-trade checklist with the plan and print it.

The formulas

• Loss per unit at the stop = |entry − stop| × value per point + costs per unit (both sides) + cost % × (entry + stop) × value per point. Slippage moves the entry and the stop fills against you; targets fill at their price, a gap at the gap price.
• Units = floor to your step of (risk budget − two order fees) ÷ loss per unit, then cut to your caps (position value ≤ your % of equity; margin ≤ what you have).
• R (money at risk) = units × loss per unit + two order fees. R at a target = (|target − entry| × value per point × units closed − its costs) ÷ R; the total is the sum over the targets.
• Break-even exit of the whole position: entry fill + costs, worked out with the cost % on both sides.
• Gap loss = units × (|entry − gap| × value per point + costs per unit) + fees: a stop is not a guaranteed exit.
• ATR: Wilder’s average true range, the true range being the largest of high − low, |high − previous close| and |low − previous close|, averaged over n rows and then smoothed as ATR = (previous ATR × (n − 1) + true range) ÷ n (ChartSchool’s ATR page, after J. Welles Wilder’s New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems).
• Value per point: a share 1 (London prices in pence: 0.01), a future its contract multiplier, a forex lot its 100,000 units of the base currency, converted to your account currency. Japan: shares trade in units of 100 (the exchange’s trading unit page).

Reading the results

• Position size: rounded down, so the loss at the stop is at most your budget. "Below one trading unit at this risk" means even the smallest position risks more than you chose: the plan then shows what that one unit would do, so you can decide.
• 1R is the money you lose if the stop fills as planned, with your costs. Every other figure is in R, so a plan reads the same at any size.
• Move in R of a target is its distance from the entry ÷ the stop’s distance; R of the part closed is what those units add after their costs.
• The chart shows the profit or loss of the whole position if it all closed at each price, with your stop, entry, targets and gap price marked; the line crosses zero at the break-even exit.

What it leaves out

• Taxes on the gain, and costs that depend on the broker (spread mark-ups, currency conversion, interest on margin): add them to the costs.
• Liquidity and partial fills: a large order may not fill at your price, and a stop can fill well beyond your slippage in a fast market or a gap.
• Margin rules of your broker and exchange, which can change without notice; the margin cap uses the % you type.
• Whether the trade is a good one: the plan checks the arithmetic of your own rules and says nothing about the market.

Limitations

• Prices must be above zero; prices below zero (as some commodity futures briefly had) are not supported.
• Costs are the ones you type: per unit, as a % of the value on each side, and a fee per order.
• One position at a time: margin and risk across several open positions are not combined.
• The ATR from pasted prices needs at least as many rows as its period, oldest first.

Privacy

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