Position Size Calculator

1What it is

The one-paragraph version, for the top of a sales page.

A pre-trade position sizing tool for Sierra Chart, drawn directly on the chart and modelled on TradingView's long/short position tool. Set your position size, place an entry, a stop and a target, and it tells you exactly what the trade risks in money, what it pays, and the reward-to-risk ratio — net of commission.

It is anchored to a candle, so it stays where you put it as new bars print, which makes it a record of a trade you took as much as a plan for one you are considering. And it is driven from the chart — grab a handle, press a button on the box itself — rather than from a settings dialog.

Where it sits in the range

This is the standard edition. It does one job with no menus to learn: one target, one way of sizing, five buttons. The Pro edition is the same engine with up to four targets, and two further sizing modes that hold risk constant or solve the contract count from a risk amount. Section 11 lays the two out side by side.

What it does not do

It never places, modifies or cancels an order, and it needs no trading connection to work. Worth stating prominently: it reassures cautious buyers, and it sets expectations for the ones hoping it will submit brackets.

2Anatomy on the chart

The box

Two filled bands: a risk band from the entry to the stop, and a reward band from the entry to the target. They meet exactly at the entry, and each carries a solid border, so the band edges are the levels — there are no separate lines to style or misalign.

The box begins one bar right of the anchor candle and extends as far right as you drag it. With Box: Width at 0 it sizes itself to the widest label with a little air either side, and it will never be narrower than its own text.

The handles

Handle	Drag it	What happens
Entry	Any direction	Vertically, the whole setup moves and every distance is preserved. Horizontally, the tool re-anchors to whichever candle you drop it on — box width included.
Stop	Vertically	Sets the stop distance.
Target	Vertically	Sets the target distance.
Width	Horizontally	On the box's right edge, mirroring the entry handle. Sets how far right the box reaches. Works in the empty space past the last candle.

Nothing can be dragged across the entry — a stop cannot become a target by accident. Direction changes only through the flip button.

Why handles rather than the lines themselves. An early version let you drag the level lines. Sierra Chart kept selecting and deselecting them faster than a level could be placed on a wick, because thin lines on a busy chart are a poor click target. Dedicated markers, offset clear of the price action, made the tool usable.

3How the money is calculated

You set the size and place the levels; risk, reward and the ratio are the outputs. Commission is round-turn, per contract.

StopTicks    = |Entry − Stop| / TickSize
TargetTicks  = |Target − Entry| / TickSize

Risk         = Quantity × (StopTicks × TickValue + Commission)
Reward       = Quantity × (TargetTicks × TickValue − Commission)

R:R          = Reward / Risk          // net of commission on both sides

The ratio is taken from the net money figures rather than from raw tick counts. With commission at zero the two are identical; set commission to $4 and a gross ratio would contradict the two currency amounts printed beside it.

The + and − buttons step the position size by Sizing: Size Step, never below one contract and never above Sizing: Maximum Position Size. Every figure on the labels updates on the press.

4What the labels say

Exact formats, so a manual can reproduce them and support can recognise them.

Label	Format	Example
Stop	Stop {ticks}t -{cur}{risk}	Stop 33t -$330.00
Target	Target {ticks}t +{cur}{reward}	Target 36t +$360.00
Entry	Size : {qty} - RR : {ratio}	Size : 8 - RR : 1.09

All three labels are padded to a common character count so they share one width and sit centred in the box. That only produces equal pixel widths in a monospaced face, which is why the default is Consolas and why the input is named to hint at it.

5The five buttons

One row under the box, in one of two states. There are no menus.

Glyph	Colour	Action	Shown	Setting for its colour
X	Red	Hide the tool, preserving every setting	Always	Buttons: Hide Button Color
H	Blue	Switch between the full view and the clean view	Always	Buttons: Handles Button Color
↕	Green	Flip the setup between long and short	Full view	Buttons: Flip Button Color
+	Button grey-blue	Position size up by one step	Full view	Buttons: Background Color
−	Button grey-blue	Position size down by one step	Full view	Buttons: Background Color

The clean view

H is a single switch for reading the chart rather than editing the trade. Pressed, it takes the grab handles off the chart and the three controls that act on the setup — flip, +, − — off the row, leaving X and H beneath the box. Pressed again, everything returns. No level, size, direction or anchor is touched in either direction, and the state survives hiding the tool with X.

It follows that the setup cannot be edited in the clean view: with no handles there is nothing to drag, and with no + or − the size is fixed. That is the point of it, but it is the one thing a new user may need told once.

The flip glyph is an input, so a customer whose font lacks the symbol can type any character they like into it. The default face is Segoe UI Symbol; Consolas does not carry the arrow.

Why the buttons are pixel-drawn

The row is painted in real screen pixels through a GDI callback rather than drawn as chart objects anchored in price and time. Chart-space cells cannot be made square, and their spacing drifts as you zoom. The painter records the rectangle it drew for each cell, and the click handler tests those exact rectangles, so what you see and what you can press never disagree.

6Moving and hiding it

Three ways to place it

Drag the entry handle. The whole setup travels, box width included, and re-anchors to the candle you drop it on. This is the everyday gesture.
Right-click the chart and choose Position Size Calculator. It lands at the exact point you clicked — that candle, that price — carrying your stop and target distances with it. It also brings the tool back if you have hidden it.
Drag it past the last candle. The empty space to the right is fair game, for a level you are waiting on. The width handle keeps working out there.

Hiding preserves everything

The red X takes the tool off the chart and keeps the contract count, direction, stop and target distances and box width. Right-click to bring it back exactly as you left it. The blue H is a lighter version of the same idea: it leaves the box on the chart but strips it back to a clean view — no handles, and only X and H in the row.

Changing the chart's symbol starts it clean. The tool notices when the chart is switched to a different symbol and places itself fresh at the current price on the live edge, keeping your position size, mode, targets and shares, direction, box width and view state. It does not carry the old levels across — a stop that made sense on ES means nothing on 6E — and it clears every drawing from the previous symbol first, so nothing from one market can leak into another. Levels do carry across a hide-and-show on the same symbol, and across a Sierra Chart restart.

7Adapting to any instrument

The study reads Tick Size and Currency Value Per Tick from the chart it sits on, so it works on any instrument the platform can chart without configuration.

That makes one chart setting load-bearing for every figure the tool reports. If Currency Value Per Tick is wrong, nothing errors — every number simply scales by the same factor and still looks plausible. The classic case is trading micros on a chart configured for the full-size contract: ES is 12.50, MES is 1.25, so risk is reported ten times too large.

Instrument	Tick size	Value per tick
ES — E-mini S&P 500	0.25	$12.50
MES — Micro E-mini S&P 500	0.25	$1.25

Where a chart's values cannot be corrected, Symbol: Tick Size Override and Symbol: Currency Value Per Tick Override take precedence; both are 0 = use the chart setting. If the chart reports a zero tick value, the study writes a warning to the Message Log naming the symbol rather than silently drawing nothing.

What was verified, and how

On 3 September 2026 both editions were audited line by line for anything that assumes a particular instrument. The findings and their fixes:

Checked	Result
Hardcoded tick size, tick value or price constant	None anywhere. Every figure derives from the chart's two symbol settings or from an input.
Division by zero	Every divisor guarded. Tick size and tick value are checked once at the top and the study returns with a Message Log entry rather than drawing wrong numbers; quantity, weight sums, per-contract cost and bar pitch each have their own guard.
Negative and zero prices	Eight places assumed a positive price and were rewritten. Spread charts and back-adjusted continuous contracts both print negative prices routinely, and CL itself traded below zero in April 2020. The tool now places, restores, draws and positions its buttons correctly at any price, above or below zero.
Sanity checks that used a ratio of price	Replaced with distances measured in the instrument's own ticks. A ratio is meaningless when a price can be negative or near zero; a tick count means the same thing on every instrument.
Tick-size range	Nothing depends on the magnitude. The scale spans roughly five orders of magnitude across the instruments the platform charts — from a thirty-second of a point on the bond futures down to fractions of a pip on the currency futures — and the arithmetic is identical at either end.
Price and money formatting	Labels quote tick counts and money, never a raw price, so nothing depends on the instrument's decimal places. The currency prefix is an input.
Bar spacing	Measured from the chart's own bars, with a fallback when a bar duration cannot be derived. Works on time, tick, volume, range and Renko charts.
Charts with too few bars	The study returns before touching the bar arrays when fewer than two bars are loaded.
Switching the chart to another symbol	Found and fixed. The study instance, its remembered values and its grab handles all survive a symbol change, and the old handles were being read back as though the user had dragged them — which mixed one symbol's levels with another's. The tool now detects the change, clears every drawing from the previous symbol, and places itself fresh on the new one with all settings kept.

What this verification is and is not. It is a complete static audit: every instrument assumption in the source was found and removed, and the reasoning is recorded above rather than asserted. It is not a substitute for loading the study on an unfamiliar symbol and looking at it. Before launch, an hour each on a currency future and an energy future — different tick size, different tick value, different price magnitude — would confirm on screen what the audit establishes in the code.

8Complete settings reference

All 39 inputs, in the order they appear in the study's settings window. Each carries a description shown in the platform when you select it.

#	Setting	Default	Range	Notes
Sizing
2	Position Size	8	1 – 1,000,000	The + and − buttons step it
3	Maximum Position Size	100	1 – 1,000,000	Guard against one + press too many
4	Size Step For + / − Buttons	1	1 – 10,000	Contracts per press
6	Round-Turn Commission Per Contract	0.00	0 – 10,000	Added to risk, subtracted from reward. R:R is net.
7	Currency Symbol	$	text	Prefixes money on the labels
8	Starting Stop Distance (Ticks)	20	1 – 100,000	Used when the tool is first placed
Target
11	Starting R Multiple	2.0	0.1 – 100	Where the target sits at first placement, as a multiple of the stop distance
Box
20	Width (Bars, 0 = fit to labels)	0	0 – 100,000	A starting point only; the right-edge handle owns it afterwards
21	Reward Fill Color	0,128,64	colour	Sets the band's border colour too
22	Risk Fill Color	185,0,0	colour	Sets the band's border colour too
23	Fill Transparency (0-100)	72	0 – 100	0 solid, 100 invisible
Labels
30	Show	Yes	Yes / No
31	Text Size	10	4 – 60	Points
32	Font Face (blank = chart font)	Consolas	text	Monospaced keeps every label the same width
33	Text Color	255,255,255	colour
34	Entry Background (Size / R:R)	100,106,119	colour	Also colours the entry and width handles
35	Stop Background	200,66,66	colour	Also colours the stop handle
36	Target Background	56,160,105	colour	Also colours the target handle
37	Offset From Line (Ticks)	0	0 – 1,000	Lifts a label clear of its edge
Handles
40	Marker Shape	Triangle Left	8 options	Triangle Left, X, Plus, Square, Diamond, Star, Point, Dash
41	Size	18	2 – 60	Bigger is easier to grab
42	Gap From Box (Bars)	1	1 – 200	How far left of the box they sit
43	Snap Entry To Candle	Yes	Yes / No	No allows free horizontal placement
Buttons
50	Show On-Chart Buttons	Yes	Yes / No	Pointer events are only requested while this is on
51	Cell Size (Pixels)	40	10 – 200	Cells are square
52	Gap Between Cells (Pixels)	8	0 – 40
53	Offset From Box Left Edge (Pixels)	0	0 – 2,000
54	Offset Below Lowest Level (Pixels)	24	0 – 2,000	Raise it if the bottom label overlaps
55	Text Size	15	5 – 60	Points
56	Font Face	Segoe UI Symbol	text	Must carry the flip arrow
57	Background Color	140,146,159	colour	The + and − faces. A lighter shade of the entry label by default.
58	Text Color	255,255,255	colour
59	Handles Button Color	106,155,204	colour	The H
60	Hide Button Color	200,66,66	colour	The X
66	Flip Button Color	56,160,105	colour	The up-down arrow. Same index and default in the Pro edition.
65	Symbol – Flip Long/Short	↕ U+2195	text	Any character your font carries
Symbol
70	Tick Size Override	0	0 – 1e6	0 = use the chart setting
71	Currency Value Per Tick Override	0	0 – 1e6	0 = use the chart setting
Advanced
80	Drawing Line Number Base	780000	1,000 – 2e9	Pro uses 790000, so both editions can share a chart at their defaults

The numbering is shared with Pro on purpose. Every setting that exists in both editions has the same index number in both, so a support conversation about "input 22" means the same thing whichever product the customer has. The gaps — 0, 1, 5, 10, 12–18, 61–64, 67 — are where Pro-only settings live. Sierra Chart stores a customer's settings by index, so these numbers are frozen after release: never close a gap, never reorder.

9Troubleshooting

Symptom first, because that is what a customer arrives with.

Symptom	Cause	Fix
The study isn't in the Studies list	The DLL is in the wrong folder, or Sierra Chart was running when it was copied in	Close Sierra Chart fully, put the file directly in `\Data\`, start again
Every money figure looks ten times too big or small	The chart's Currency Value Per Tick belongs to a different contract — the micro-on-a-full-size-chart case	Correct it in Chart Settings › Symbol, or set `Symbol: Currency Value Per Tick Override`
The buttons don't respond	A drawing tool is the active tool. Sierra Chart only delivers mouse events to a study when Pointer, Chart Values or Hand is active	Select `Tools › Pointer`. Platform behaviour, not a setting. The right-click menu always works.
The flip button shows an empty box	The chosen font doesn't carry the arrow	Set `Buttons: Font Face` to Segoe UI Symbol, or type any character into `Buttons: Symbol – Flip Long/Short`
The bottom label overlaps the buttons	Not enough clearance for the label size in use	Raise `Buttons: Offset Below Lowest Level (Pixels)`
I can't find it on the chart	It's anchored; if you've scrolled forward it may be off to the left	Right-click where you want it and choose Position Size Calculator
The handles are gone, and so are the flip and +/− buttons	The blue `H` button was pressed — that is the clean view	Press `H` again. No settings were changed.
A level won't cross the entry	By design — a stop cannot silently become a target	Use the flip button to change direction
+ stops working at some size	`Sizing: Maximum Position Size` has been reached	Raise it. It exists to catch one press too many.
Two copies on one chart interfere	Both address the same chart drawing numbers	Give the second a different `Advanced: Drawing Line Number Base` — 770000, for example
The box is wider or narrower than expected	`Box: Width` is 0, so it fits itself to the widest label	Drag the right-edge handle, or set an explicit width
It re-placed itself after I changed the chart's symbol	By design: a new symbol gets a fresh placement at its own current price, with every setting kept	Expected. Drag the handles to where you want them on the new symbol.
I want more targets, or the size solved for me	Not in this edition	That is the Pro edition — see section 11

10Limits worth disclosing

A buyer who reads these first sees honesty; a buyer who discovers them first sees a bug.

Limit	Status	Detail
Buttons need the Pointer tool	Platform	ACSIL receives mouse events only when Pointer, Chart Values or Hand is active. Unfixable. The handles and the right-click menu are unaffected.
One target, one sizing mode	By design	The defining difference from Pro. Say it plainly on the product page so nobody buys the wrong edition.
Two instances need different line bases	Open	Documented rather than prevented. Deriving the base from the study instance ID would remove the trap.
Equal label widths assume a monospaced font	Open	Padding is to a character count. A proportional face gives ragged widths.
Forward-space width on non-time bars	Open	Right of the last candle there are no timestamps, so position is projected from the last bar's duration. Exact on time bars; drifts slightly on trade-count, volume, range and Renko charts.
Not yet run on an unfamiliar instrument	Open	Audited in full for instrument assumptions (section 7) and none remain, but it has only been watched on ES and MES.

11Standard vs Pro

Same engine, same drawing, same handles. The differences are exactly these.

Capability	Position Size Calculator	Position Size Calculator Pro
Targets	One	Up to four, each with its own share of the position; contract count per target shown on its label
Sizing	You set the size; risk and reward are calculated	That, plus Fixed Risk (risk held constant, stop and targets move to keep it) and Auto Size (place the stop, the contract count is solved from your risk amount)
Buttons	One row: X, H, flip, +, −	Two rows — X, H, flip, +, − then the three modes and T+ — plus a share row per target once there is more than one
Settings	39	55
Anchoring to a candle	Both
Grab handles, width handle, forward-space placement	Both
Right-click placement at the click point	Both
Hide with X, preserving all settings	Both
Net-of-commission R:R	Both
Tick size and tick value overrides	Both
Never touches an order	Both
Line-number base	780000	790000
DLL	PositionSizeCalculatorStandard_64.dll	PositionSizeCalculatorPro_64.dll
Right-click menu entry	Position Size Calculator	Position Size Calculator Pro

How to pitch the split

The standard edition is for someone who already knows their size and wants to see what a stop and target cost, on the chart, without learning anything. Pro is for someone who scales out, or who wants the size solved from a risk budget — the question a position size calculator is named after. Both can be installed side by side and used on the same chart.