What a lot is actually worth
On a dollar-quoted pair, a standard lot moves about ten dollars per pip, half a lot moves five and a micro moves ten cents. The lot itself has no value: what has value is how much it moves when price travels one pip, and that changes with the asset and with your account currency. Open the calculator that runs this with your own numbers
This page answers the question in the order it actually shows up: how much does this move per pip, what does it cost if the stop is hit, and which lot fits the risk I am willing to lose.
To go deeper into each part of this calculation: Lot size and position size calculator · Pip value calculator · Pip (forex)
A lot is worth nothing on its own
A lot is a unit of volume, not of money. A standard forex lot is 100,000 units of the base currency; 0.5 is 50,000; 0.1 is 10,000 and 0.01 is 1,000. That number alone says nothing about profit or loss, because the result depends on how far price moves.
The bridge between volume and money is the pip value. It answers one thing: when price moves the smallest quoted unit, how much enters or leaves the account. Multiplied by your stop distance, it becomes the maximum loss on that order, which is the number that actually matters.
On dollar-quoted pairs the maths is direct
When the dollar is the second currency in the pair, as in EURUSD and GBPUSD, the pip value per standard lot is fixed at ten dollars. That is where the familiar table comes from: one lot is ten dollars per pip, 0.5 is five, 0.1 is one dollar and 0.01 is ten cents.
So a 40-pip stop costs 400 dollars on one lot, 200 on half a lot and 4 dollars on a micro. Notice that the stop, not the lot, is half of the equation: doubling the lot and halving the stop leaves the risk in money exactly the same.
- 1.00 lot: about US$ 10 per pip
- 0.50 lot: about US$ 5 per pip
- 0.10 lot: about US$ 1 per pip
- 0.01 lot: about US$ 0.10 per pip
Outside those pairs the table stops working
If the dollar is not the quoted currency, pip value depends on the exchange rate at the time of the trade. On USDJPY a pip is 1,000 yen per lot, and how many dollars that represents changes every day with the rate. On crosses such as EURGBP there is a further conversion into your account currency.
On index, metal or crypto CFDs the contract size itself varies between brokers. A gold lot is often 100 ounces, but not everywhere, and the minimum step can differ. There is no universal number here: your broker's contract is the only source, and reusing the dollar table for these assets is like pricing electricity from the cost of petrol.
That is why this guide publishes no per-asset value table. Such a table looks useful and ages into being wrong.
The calculation that matters runs the other way
Most people ask what 0.5 lots is worth when what they need is the inverted question: given what I accept losing, which lot fits. The formula is risk in money divided by the stop in pips times the pip value per lot.
With round numbers: 250 dollars of risk, a 40-pip stop, ten dollars per pip per lot. That is 250 divided by 400, or 0.62 lots, which you round down to the broker's step, usually 0.01. Rounding up means blowing through the risk you set yourself.
Picking the lot first and squeezing the stop to fit is the most expensive inversion there is, and it is behind a large share of blown daily limits on prop firm accounts.
On a prop account the lot hits two ceilings
Beyond your own risk, a prop account usually caps the number of contracts or lots open at once, and imposes a daily loss limit that ignores your plan entirely. A lot that fits your risk may still be refused by the size cap, or be too large for what remains of today's limit.
Check both before sending the order: the size cap sits in the rules of the account you bought, and how much still fits today depends on the running result of the session. The firm pages on this site carry those numbers with the official source and the date each was checked.
FAQ
What is 0.5 lots worth?
On a dollar-quoted pair, about five dollars per pip, or 50,000 units of the base currency in notional. On other assets the value moves with the exchange rate and with the broker's contract size.
Is 0.5 lots half the risk of 1 lot?
On the same asset with the same stop, yes. But changing the asset or the stop distance changes the risk in money even with an identical lot, and the stop is what usually changes unnoticed.
What is the smallest lot I can trade?
At most brokers, 0.01, the micro. Some offer 0.001. The minimum step is what limits how precisely you can tune risk on a small account.
Why does the calculator return an odd lot size?
Because the risk you set rarely lands on an exact multiple of the broker's step. Round down: rounding up means accepting more risk than you chose.