In the last lesson we worked out what percentage of capital is reasonable to risk in each case. But between "I'm risking one percent" and an open trade, there's one more step almost everyone trips over. A percentage isn't a volume. You can't tell the terminal "enter at 1%" — the terminal only understands contracts and coins. And this is where something many people skip actually starts: converting a dollar risk into a concrete position size.
It sounds trivial — you just divide, that's it. Except it's not all of it. On futures and on crypto, this arithmetic works differently, and on futures it sometimes runs into a wall: the size you need simply doesn't exist. So this lesson is split into two parts — first futures with all their pitfalls, then crypto, where the pitfalls are different, but there are plenty of those too.
Futures: the tick value is fixed by the contract specification
The first thing to get straight about futures: the value of one tick here isn't tied to the instrument's price. It's set by the contract specification — the exchange defines, once and for all, how much the minimum price step is worth. One tick of the S&P 500 costs one amount, one tick of the euro costs another, and that's not about whether the instrument is "expensive" or "cheap" — it's about how the contract itself is built. This is a fundamental difference from crypto, where position risk can be calculated directly from the price distance per unit. Here you take the tick value from the contract specification and calculate.
Volume (contracts) = dollar risk ÷ (stop in ticks × tick value). First you decide how much the attempt is worth, then you look at where the stop sits, and only from those two numbers do you get the volume. Not the other way around.
The logic is the same one we worked out in the last lesson: the cost of the attempt first, then the volume. The only difference is that on futures, the denominator holds the tick value from the specification — and that's exactly what's about to complicate everything.
Case 1. A $5,000 account, S&P 500 — and no trade at all
Let's lock in the inputs and only change the instrument from here on. Account: $5,000. Stop-loss per trade: 10 ticks. We're looking at the S&P 500 index future (E-mini, ticker ES): the tick value here is $12.50.
Let's calculate the risk on one contract. A 10-tick stop, a tick worth $12.50 — so one contract gives a risk of 10 × 12.50 = $125. That's before we've even gotten to volume; that's the cost of a single unit.
Now let's apply risk management. I want to risk 1% of the account — that's $50 per trade. Dividing: 50 ÷ 125 = 0.4 contracts. But you can't buy a fraction of a futures contract. We round down — and get zero. Meaning at this account size, this stop, and this risk, I physically can't open a trade while staying within my risk. Even a single contract would cost me $125 instead of the planned fifty.
Fine, let's raise the risk to 2% — $100. Calculating: 100 ÷ 125 = 0.8 contracts. Rounded down again, zero again. One S&P contract with a $5,000 account doesn't even fit inside a two-percent risk at a 10-tick stop.
⚠️ Important: This isn't simply "not enough money for margin" — margin requirements are a separate constraint. The problem is subtler: the instrument's minimum size is large enough that even one unit blows past your risk limit. And until you realize this before entering, you'll keep opening trades with two to three times the planned risk, genuinely believing "I'm risking one percent."
And the S&P isn't an exception here, either. Let's check it on another contract.
Case 2. Same account, euro futures
We take the euro futures contract (6E), leaving everything else untouched: $5,000 account, 10-tick stop. The tick value here is $6.25 — half that of the S&P.
Risk per contract: 10 × 6.25 = $62.50. Already easier, but look at what happens. At a 1% risk ($50), calculating 50 ÷ 62.50 = 0.8 contracts — rounded down again, zero again. Even the euro doesn't fit inside a one-percent risk with this account. At 2% ($100), you get 100 ÷ 62.50 = 1.6 — now you can open one contract, but the actual risk on it will be $62.50, meaning 1.25% of the account, not an even two.
Essentially, you have three ways out of this situation, and all three are honest ones.
First — consciously raise the risk per trade. Be honest about it: on the euro, one trade with this account costs 1.25%, and on the S&P, a full 2.5%. If you're comfortable with that number, trade it; if not, don't touch it. It's not a problem that the risk is above one percent. The problem is when it's above one percent and you don't know it.
Second — grow your capital. For one contract to fit fairly within 1%, the account needs to cover the risk on a single unit: for the euro, at $62.50, that's around $6,250; for the S&P, at $125, that's already around $12,500. For a lot of people, this isn't a task for tomorrow, which is why there's a third way.
Third — and for a small account, the most workable one — switch to micro contracts. More on this next, because it removes the problem almost entirely.
Micro contracts: when volume becomes manageable again
A micro contract is the same instrument, just with a smaller notional value. For the S&P, that's MES (Micro E-mini S&P 500), with a tick value there of $1.25 — exactly ten times smaller than the full-size ES.
Let's run the same math. $5,000 account, 10-tick stop, 1% risk — $50. Risk on one micro contract: 10 × 1.25 = $12.50. Dividing: 50 ÷ 12.50 = 4 contracts. And that's exactly four, with no remainder — actual risk of $50, exactly your one percent.
Feel the difference. On the full-size contract I couldn't enter at all, but with the micro I have flexibility in hand: want to risk less — take three; want two percent — take eight. The step size has gotten small, and the position obeys your risk management now instead of dictating it. For a small account, this isn't a "budget version for people with less money" — it's the only way to actually stick to your risk on these instruments.
Here's a summary across all three contracts — the same $5,000 and a 10-tick stop, with only the instrument changing:
| Instrument | Tick value | Risk on 1 contract (10-tick stop) | Fits into 1% ($50) | Fits into 2% ($100) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES (E-mini S&P 500) | $12.50 | $125 | no | no |
| 6E (euro futures) | $6.25 | $62.50 | no | 1 contract (actual 1.25%) |
| MES (Micro E-mini S&P 500) | $1.25 | $12.50 | 4 contracts | 8 contracts |
And here's where a common question comes up: what if you're used to analyzing the liquid full-size contract, but want to trade a micro volume — do you have to stare at the micro chart, with its thinner order book and sparser tape? No, you don't.
Cross-Trading: you analyze ES, orders go to MES
The full-size contract has higher liquidity: a denser order book, a richer tape, cleaner clusters in Footprint, and clearer visibility into what a large participant is doing. It's the one that's convenient to run your whole volume analysis on. Physically entering, though, makes more sense with a micro volume, to keep your risk in line with a small account. The micro chart is inconvenient to read for this purpose — the data is thinner and the structure less pronounced — and switching back and forth at the moment of entry is slow.
In ATAS, this is solved by the Cross-Trading feature. It links two instruments: you analyze ES and manage your orders right on its chart, while execution goes through MES. ES and MES prices are correlated almost 100%, so the quality of your analysis stays at the level of the liquid contract, while the notional position size is ten times smaller — exactly what a small account needs.
💡 How to turn it on: in the platform's general settings, check the
Cross-tradingbox, then openChart Traderon the E-mini chart and select the micro ticker you need. ACrossTradingbadge will appear in the chart header, and the trading panel will use the selected linked micro contract for order execution. Everything else is automatic: you place a limit order on the main chart, and it gets executed on the micro contract, as one single order, not an extra position. You don't need to keep a separate MES chart open.
In essence, you learn and trade on a real market with a normal, readable picture — but with risks a beginner can actually afford.
That covers futures: their main quirk is that volume comes quantized in whole contracts, and micros give you back precision. On crypto, it's the opposite — there, volume gets divided into small fractions, and, you'd think, the problem disappears. But it only disappears to make room for another one.
Cryptocurrency: precise volume — but an invisible enemy shows up
On crypto, the calculation is simpler in exactly one spot: volume divides into small fractions of a coin. There's still a lot-size step here too, but it's incomparably smaller than a whole contract — you can fit volume to almost any risk precisely, without that wall futures kept running into. You don't need micro contracts here.
Volume (in coins) = dollar risk ÷ (entry-to-stop distance in dollars per 1 coin). Here it's more convenient to calculate directly from the price distance in dollars per unit of the instrument.
$5,000 account, risking 1% — $50. Say on Bitcoin, the distance from entry to stop is $200 per 1 BTC. Dividing: 50 ÷ 200 = 0.25 BTC. And that's exactly 0.25, no rounding down at all — the wall we kept hitting on futures simply doesn't exist here.
But this is exactly where crypto's real problem hides, and it's not about volume. It's fees. On futures, the fee is tiny and barely factors into your risk calculation, while on a crypto exchange, if you have a regular account without high trading volume, it's noticeable — and it quietly eats into your result on every trade.
Typical Binance rates for perpetual futures on a regular account — a reference point, not a constant — are around 0.02% maker (a limit order sitting in the book) and around 0.05% taker (a market order that takes liquidity). This is calculated off the position's size, not off your risk, and it's charged twice — on entry and on exit. Entering and exiting at market as a taker is already about 0.1% of the position on fees alone.
Why fees force you to move up a timeframe
Zero point one percent sounds trivial — right up until you compare that number to the size of the move you're actually trying to catch.
Here's the trick. If you're taking local Footprint signals on a one-minute or five-minute chart, your target is small — the move it covers is small too. Say the target delivers around 0.2% of movement. You gave up 0.1% on entry and exit, and half your profit is just gone. And fees hit your losses too: you pay the stop, plus the fee on top of it. In the end, the risk-to-reward ratio you entered for simply falls apart on short targets — actual profit is smaller, actual loss is bigger.
And so you get a trap: plenty of signals on the lower timeframe, trading feels busy, but in practice you're working for the exchange. Profit barely covers costs, and over time that "barely" eats everything.
What to do about this is a matter of calculation, not belief. Before trading your chosen strategy on a live account, run it against history and honestly calculate: what its real stops are, what the expected profit per trade is, and how much of it your fee rates take. This is exactly the kind of statistics you'll gather later on the simulator and in this module's homework — just now with one more line item in it, costs.
If it turns out most of the profit is going toward covering fees, the conclusion is simple: the timeframe is too small. Move up to a 15-minute or 30-minute chart — targets get bigger, the move's potential confidently covers that same 0.1% in fees, and what's left over is enough to actually make sense. That same 0.1% against a 0.6–1% target is now a much smaller share of the move, rather than half of it. This, by the way, is a general rule for both futures and crypto: a very small timeframe in manual trading almost always fights against costs. It's just that on crypto, with its fee structure, you feel it the sharpest.
⚠️ Important: Before opening a trade, calculate two things — whether the volume you need fits inside your risk (on futures, micro contracts solve this; on crypto, fractional sizing does), and whether anything's left of the move after the exchange takes its cut. If even one of those doesn't check out, either change the instrument or change the timeframe. But don't take the trade with your eyes closed.
We've now put together the theory around a trade: where to place the stop, what volume to enter with, how much the exchange will take. What's left is to actually drill it — and it's better not to do that on a live account. Next in the module, we get acquainted with the Market Replay simulator: how to run trades on historical data without risking real money.