Finding a good setup is the easy half. What separates a profitable intraday trader from a break-even one is almost always the boring part: how much they risked, where the stop went, what they did at the first target, and when they stopped trading. This page covers that half.
See how the desks manage trades →Not every valid setup deserves the same risk. Grading them forces that decision before you're in the trade, when you can still be objective:
| Grade | What it looks like | Relative risk |
|---|---|---|
| A | Strong untested level, full confluence, clean structure | ~1.5× your base size |
| B | Solid setup, some caveats — your standard trade | Base size |
| C | Marginal: level already tested, or fighting the trend | ~½ base size |
A common scheme on a larger account is 3% / 2% / 1% of account risk for A / B / C. The exact percentages matter far less than the ratio — a C trade must be meaningfully smaller than a B, and an A meaningfully larger. Smaller accounts necessarily run higher percentages; scale the idea, not the numbers.
From there the arithmetic is fixed: contracts = dollar risk ÷ (stop distance × point value).
Decide the dollar risk from the grade, decide the stop from the structure, and let the position
size fall out. Never do it the other way around.
Size up for the mirror image: strong untested areas, and failed breakdowns in an uptrend.
A stop should sit where the setup is wrong, not where your comfort runs out. Too tight and you'll be stopped by noise on a thesis that was never disproven. On the S&P futures, for example, stops much under ~8 points rarely invalidate anything; ~10 points is a realistic working figure, read live at the level.
Setup-specific placement matters more than a fixed number. A failed breakdown is invalidated only when the flush low itself fails, so the stop belongs a few points beneath that low — not beneath your entry.
Most of the damage in day trading comes from green trades going red. The management sequence that prevents it:
Why granularity matters: you cannot trim in thirds with a one-contract position. Trading smaller contract multiples (micros rather than minis, or fewer shares per clip) exists precisely so you can lock in the majority at T1 and still hold a runner. If your size forces all-or-nothing exits, your management options disappear.
The goal of a session is one quality trade executed well — not maximum screen time. Once you've taken money out of the market, the highest-expectancy decision is usually to stop.
Every management rule above is a hypothesis about your edge, and hypotheses should be graded. That's why the SPX Lens scanners resolve each signal on whether it reached its first target before its stop, and report win rate, reward-to-risk and expectancy in R rather than a curated highlight reel — see the Track Record and the per-scanner performance panes. A setup with a 38% win rate and 2.5R average reward is a better business than a 70% win rate at 0.3R.
Educational content only — nothing on this page is financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security, and none of the sizing figures are a recommendation for your account. Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss. Concepts here are our own explanation of widely used risk-management practice, informed in part by the Trade With Insight (TWI) futures playbooks. © SPX Lens · About · Help & FAQ