Position size calculator
Your capital, your risk tolerance, your stop. The same formula the desk applies to itself.
Last checked 22 July 2026 · free, no sign-up
Two constraints, and the tighter one wins
The first sizes off your stop: if you are willing to lose 1% of capital on a trade and the stop is Rs 6 below the entry, you can hold capital ÷ 6 × 1% shares. The second ignores the stop entirely and caps the position at 8% of capital by value. Whichever produces fewer shares is the answer.
The second constraint is the one people skip, and it is the one that matters on a bad day. A very tight stop implies a very large position, and a large position does not respect its stop when a stock gaps through it overnight on an earnings surprise. The cap is what stops a well-reasoned trade from becoming a concentrated one.
A zero is an answer, not an error
If the tool returns zero shares, the setup does not fit your capital at that stop distance. The desk's own pipeline discards those candidates rather than publishing them. The temptation is to widen the risk until a position appears; that converts a sizing rule into a wish, which is the failure the rule was written to prevent.
Why this is a tool and not part of the research
Henneth publishes which strategy is firing on a name and how that strategy has performed — general commentary, identical for every reader. It does not publish a level or a share count on a named stock, because both require numbers only you have: the price you would actually pay, and your capital. You derive the levels yourself in the strategy level calculator and the size here. That line is deliberate — it is the difference between research anyone can read and a personal instruction.
Nothing you type here is stored, sent anywhere, or attached to any analytics event. Research, not advice — the desk never executes trades and this is not a recommendation to take a position.
FAQ
Common questions
Why does the desk not just tell me how many shares to buy?
Because it does not know your capital, and a share count against someone else’s capital is worse than useless — it looks like an instruction. Henneth publishes which strategy is triggering on a name and how it has performed; the levels and the size are arithmetic on top of numbers only you have — your entry, your capital — so they belong here and in the strategy level calculator rather than in the research.
Where does this formula come from?
It is Rule 4 of the desk’s own risk rules, applied to the desk’s own model portfolio, and it is ported here unchanged: size by stop distance so a stop-out costs a fixed fraction of capital, then hard-cap the position value at 8% so no single name can dominate. The same code path runs on both sides.
Why 1% risk and an 8% cap?
They answer different failure modes. The 1% decides what a single stop-out costs you — at that level a run of losses is survivable arithmetic rather than a crisis. The 8% caps what one company can be worth in the book regardless of how tight its stop looks, because a tight stop on a big position is still a big position when a stock gaps through it overnight.
It says zero shares. Is that a bug?
No, it is the answer. A zero means your stop is too wide for that risk budget at that price — the setup does not fit your capital. The desk drops such setups rather than publishing them. Widening the risk until a position appears is exactly what the rule exists to prevent.
Does this account for brokerage, CGT or slippage?
No. It sizes the position; it does not model the round trip. PSX costs run roughly 0.15–0.5% per side depending on your broker, and the desk charges an estimated friction per stock inside its backtests rather than assuming a flat figure. Treat the output as the size before costs.
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The desk
These numbers are the easy part
Henneth reads PSX companies in plain English — what the business earns, what it's worth, what changed this week. Research, not advice.