Position sizing for crypto perps: the 1% rule, stops, leverage and liquidation

How do you size a position on crypto perps? Decide how much of the account you are willing to lose if the stop is hit, often 0.5% to 2% and commonly 1%, measure how far the stop is from your entry, and divide: position size = dollars at risk ÷ stop distance. Leverage doesn’t change that size. It only decides how much margin the position ties up and how close the liquidation price sits. On Hyperliquid at 22:25 UTC on Nov 11, 2026, risking 1% of a $10,000 account with the stop two average daily ranges away came to a $1,592 BTC position and a $705 HYPE position.

Position sizing on Senpi

Senpi publishes this guide. On Senpi, sizing is part of the strategy, written down before it trades:

• Sized from the strategy wallet. Templates size positions from their own wallet’s balance. Moose, for example, puts 30% of the wallet’s withdrawable balance behind each of up to three positions.
• Leverage from volatility. Some templates set leverage per coin from its recent range so the stop sits outside normal noise: Moose picks 2x to 5x from each coin’s 4-hour ATR so its stop lands at least two ATRs from entry, where that range allows.
• You choose the risk. When you describe your own strategy, the agent asks how much to risk as one of its questions, alongside what to trade and how to exit.
• Losses capped per strategy. Strategies built from a rule or a template carry the Dynamic Stop-Loss (DSL) from the first fill, and each can have its own daily-loss halt, which lifts at the next UTC midnight, or a drawdown halt, which waits until you resume it. Copy strategies carry at most a flat stop.
• Contained. Each strategy trades from its own isolated strategy wallet, so one strategy’s losses can’t use another’s margin.

A strategy you confirm runs as code on Senpi’s runtime, and by default no AI model makes live trading decisions. The agent holds no key and cannot withdraw. Senpi adds 0% on paid plans (0.03% on the free trial).

The position size formula

Position size = (account × risk per trade) ÷ stop distance

1. 01Pick the risk per trade. 1% of a $10,000 account is $100: the most you lose if the stop is hit, before fees and slippage.
2. 02Place the stop where the trade is wrong, not where the loss feels comfortable. A common volatility-based choice is one to three average daily ranges from entry.
3. 03Divide. $100 ÷ 6.3% = $1,592 of BTC. If the stop is hit, you lose about $100 plus costs.
4. 04Then choose leverage only to decide how much margin to post, and check that the liquidation price is well beyond the stop.

How much Hyperliquid’s largest markets move, Nov 11, 2026

The maintenance margin is half the initial margin at the market’s maximum leverage. The average daily range is the average true range (ATR): each day’s high-to-low span, including any gap from the previous close.

Sizing a $10,000 account at 1% risk

Sized by risk, none of these positions needs much leverage: the BTC position is 0.16x the account. At 5x, liquidation sits beyond the stop on all four markets, but only 1.6 percentage points beyond it on HYPE (15.8% against a 14.2% stop). Lower leverage, or isolated margin with extra collateral, widens that gap.

Leverage and liquidation on Hyperliquid

• Maintenance margin is half the initial margin at the market’s maximum leverage: 1.25% for a 40x market up to 16.7% for a 3x market. Large positions on some markets move to margin tiers with lower maximum leverage.
• Liquidation distance for an isolated position at leverage L is roughly (1/L − maintenance margin) ÷ (1 − maintenance margin). Hyperliquid publishes the exact formula in its docs.
• Cross margin lets a position draw on the whole account, which pushes liquidation further away but puts all of the account’s positions at risk together.
• When it happens, Hyperliquid first closes the position with market orders on the order book; below two-thirds of the maintenance margin, the liquidator vault in HLP takes it over. More in funding, margin and liquidation explained.

Daily-loss limits, drawdown limits and correlation

• Daily-loss limit. Stop opening trades after a set loss in a day, for example three times your per-trade risk. It caps the damage from a bad session and from revenge trading.
• Drawdown limit. Pause the strategy after a set fall from its peak and review it before you restart. See max drawdown.
• Correlation. BTC, ETH and SOL usually move together, so three 1% risks on them behave more like one 3% bet than three separate ones.
• Funding. It is paid on the full position size every hour, so a bigger position pays (or earns) proportionally more while it is open.

Scalping vs swing trading

Tight stops mean big positions. A scalp with a 0.5% stop at 1% risk is a $20,000 position on a $10,000 account, and a taker round trip at 0.09% costs $18: 18% of the risk budget before the trade moves. That is why scalping only works with maker fills and tight spreads. A swing trade with a stop two daily ranges away uses a far smaller position, so fees matter less, but it holds through more funding payments.

Hyperliquid charges 0.015% for maker orders and 0.045% for taker orders at the base tier on crypto perps. Senpi adds 0% on paid plans and 0.03% on the free trial or without a paid plan.

This is educational material, not financial advice. The market readings are data, not trade signals, and leveraged perps can lose money quickly.