Position Size Calculator: How to Calculate Forex Lot Size in Seconds
Before the trade. Pick a size that keeps the loss inside your plan, no matter where the exit ends up.
Profit and Loss Calculator: Work Out Pips and Dollars on Any Trade
Your broker statement shows a number. It does not tell you how you got there. The P&L Calculator turns entry, exit, and size into pips and dollars so you can score the trade honestly — and journal it without lying to yourself.
There is a moment after every closed trade where the broker shows you a number and you do one of two things. You shrug, screenshot it, and move on. Or you stop, work out where the number came from, and write down what the trade actually did. The second one is the difference between a journal and a wishlist. The Profit and Loss Calculator exists to make that second option take about ten seconds instead of ten minutes.
I started journalling properly in 2019 after a stretch where I genuinely could not tell you whether my last twenty trades had made or lost money on average. I had the broker P&L. I did not have the story. So I started logging every closed trade with five numbers: direction, entry, exit, size, and the pair rate at the time. Three months in, the pattern was obvious. My short trades on Friday afternoons were quietly bleeding the account. I did not need a guru to tell me that. I needed the math.
What the Calculator Actually Does
It does two small things, accurately. First, it converts the price move from entry to exit into pips, respecting the pip size of the pair you traded (0.0001 for most pairs, 0.01 for JPY pairs, 0.1 for gold). Second, it multiplies those pips by the pip value of one standard lot for that pair, then by your lot size, to get the dollar P&L. Direction flips the sign — a long that goes up is profit, a short that goes up is loss.
The Inputs and Why Each One Matters
- Direction — long or short. Get this wrong on the way in and every other number lies.
- Currency pair — fixes the pip size automatically so you don't have to remember that JPY pairs are different.
- Entry and exit price — the actual fills from your broker, not the prices you wished you'd got.
- Lot size — exactly what you traded. If you scaled in or out, treat each clip as a separate calculation and add them up.
- Current pair rate — used to convert pip value into your account currency for crosses and non-USD pairs.
Use It For Post-Trade, Not Pre-Trade Hope
This calculator is a journalling tool, not a fantasy tool. If you are punching in numbers to see how much you would make if price went to your target, you are using the wrong tool — that is the Risk/Reward Calculator's job. P&L is for what already happened. The discipline is to type in the real fills, accept the real number, and write one honest sentence next to it about why the trade worked or didn't.
The Honesty Check
Run the calculator on your last twenty closed trades and add the dollar P&L column up. If the total is positive, write down which two or three trades carried the rest — because they almost certainly did. If the total is negative, find the single biggest loser and ask whether the stop was actually where you said it would be when you took the trade. Most traders, including me at various points, find out the stop got moved at least once. That is the most expensive habit in retail trading, and you cannot fix what you will not measure.
Try the Profit and Loss Calculator
Score every closed trade in seconds. Free, no signup, works for every major pair.
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