Scope note: the posture math in this post assumes spot trading with no leverage. Leveraged positions change the math — don't cross-apply it.
There's a version of "automation" that looks great in a screenshot and then quietly wrecks you in real life.
Not because your strategy is bad. Not because your entries are cursed. Because sizing drift is the silent killer of hands-off systems — and most people don't even know it's happening until the damage is done.
This note covers the operator doctrine on percentage sizing: what it actually does, why it stabilizes your risk posture, and how to implement it without making rookie mistakes.
The Problem Nobody Mentions: Sizing Drift
Fixed sizing is only stable in one scenario — the scenario where your account balance never changes.
Real accounts don't do that. They grow during winning streaks, shrink during drawdowns, fluctuate from fees and partial fills, and get manually adjusted and forgotten. When you size by fixed quantity, your risk exposure changes every time the balance moves. You can accidentally become:
- Oversized during drawdowns — the worst possible timing to be swinging heavy
- Under-allocated during growth — quieter, but you're leaving compounding on the table
Percentage sizing reduces that drift. It doesn't make you invincible. It just keeps your automation consistent across balance changes — which is the actual definition of hands-off.
The Three Sizing Modes (And When Each One Wins)
Lynx-Relay supports three order sizing modes. Here's how they compare:
| Mode | What You Control | Best For | Hands-Off Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quantity | Exact base amount (e.g., 0.01 BTC) | Testing, micro positions | Low — risk posture drifts with balance |
| Value | Notional in quote currency (e.g., $1,000) | Consistent notional targets | Medium — doesn't adapt to balance swings |
| Percentage | % of available funds | Long-term autonomous ops | High — scales naturally as balance moves |
The key detail: percentage sizing in Lynx-Relay is percent of available funds — buys use your quote balance, sells use your base balance. That's what makes it self-adjusting. It's not percentage of some fantasy number. It's live, real balance.
The Distinction That Actually Matters: Allocation vs. Risk
Most operators say "I risk 1–2% per trade" and then accidentally implement "I allocate 20% of my balance." Those are not the same thing, and conflating them will hurt you.
Allocation % = how much capital you assign to the position.
Risk % = how much you actually lose if your stop gets hit.
Allocation is a sizing decision. Risk is sizing plus stop distance plus execution reality. If you set your percentage without accounting for stop distance, you don't actually know what you're risking — you just think you do.
The Math (No PhD Required)
On spot (no leverage), the relationship is roughly:
Risk% ≈ Allocation% × Stop Distance%
(add fees/slippage, because reality charges rent)
So if you allocate 10% of your account and your stop is 3% away:
0.10 × 0.03 = 0.003 → ~0.30% of account at riskThat's a clean, predictable relationship. And critically, it stays predictable as your balance changes.
Operator cheat: work backwards from what you're willing to lose. Allocation% ≈ Target Risk% ÷ Stop Distance% — so if you're okay risking 0.5% of your account and your stop is 5% away, your max allocation is 10%. Pick the percentage after you know the stop, not before.
Worked Example: Posture Holds as Balance Scales
Entry: $50,000 | Stop: $48,500 (3% away) | Allocation: 10%
| Balance | Allocation | Notional | Approx Risk ($) | Approx Risk (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5,000 | 10% | $500 | ~$15 | ~0.30% |
| $10,000 | 10% | $1,000 | ~$30 | ~0.30% |
| $20,000 | 10% | $2,000 | ~$60 | ~0.30% |
Same posture. Different absolute size. No manual intervention.
Why Percentage Sizing Is the Hands-Off Enabler
- It compounds without you touching anything. When your account grows, your position size grows proportionally. No "promotion ceremony" required.
- It downshifts automatically during drawdowns. When the account gets hit, exposure shrinks too. You're not swinging full force while bleeding — which is exactly how fixed-quantity bots blow up.
- It makes multi-pair automation sane. Running multiple symbols? Percentage sizing keeps your total exposure from becoming random soup. Uniform allocation across strategies means uniform posture.
- It reduces exchange error drama. Under the hood, Lynx-Relay computes a tradable volume that respects exchange minimums, step sizes, and notional rules — then right-sizes or rejects when something doesn't fit. This matters more than people think on smaller balances and thinner pairs.
Common Pitfalls (How People Turn Hands-Off Into Hands-On Panic)
- Picking a percentage that's secretly lethal. Wide stops plus a big allocation equals surprise pain. Always work backwards: decide your acceptable risk percentage first, then derive the allocation from your stop distance.
- Ignoring exchange minimums on small accounts. Small balances plus tiny percentages can run into minimum notional and step-size constraints. The engine can right-size or reject, but your posture still has to be realistic for the account size you're running.
- Limits with no fill plan. If you place a limit order and walk away, you don't have automation — you have a hope generator. Lynx-Relay's built-in order monitoring and mitigation routines exist for exactly this reason. Use them.
- Skipping OPSEC basics. Rule one: never enable withdrawals on exchange API keys. That's how "trade bot" becomes "account wipeout bot."
Safe Rollout Plan
If you want this running while you sleep, rollout discipline matters.
- Dry-run first. Validate the full chain — alert → webhook → relay → exchange connectivity — without placing real orders.
- Single pair, tiny percentage. Start small enough to observe execution behavior without caring about PnL.
- Add guardrails. Lynx-Relay supports per-order controls like
delay(wait before placing),max_deviation(skip if price ran away),buffer(nudge auto-discovered prices), anddry_run(simulate only). Confirm these are working as intended. - Scale to target posture. Earn the right to go weapons-hot.
And if you're running webhooks into a Windows rig or VPS, harden the front door first. Signal Shield is included free with Lynx-Relay, and the standalone Signal Shield Installer is priced at $1 — because we build for operators, not investors.
The Short Version
If your automation still needs you to manually resize positions as your balance changes, it's not hands-off. It's just fast.
Percentage sizing is the fix. It keeps your risk posture consistent when your account wins, and automatically downshifts when it doesn't. Pick your allocation based on your stop distance and your actual risk tolerance — not a round number that feels about right.
Signals can come from the cloud. Execution doesn't have to.
If you're new here, the ladder is simple:
- Fortify the rig — harden your webhook endpoint with Signal Shield before going live
- Arm the relay — configure Lynx-Relay with percentage sizing and your guardrails in place
- Go hands-off — dry-run first, validate the chain, then scale to target posture
Fortify. Arm. Go hands-off like an adult.
Not financial advice. This is ops. You own your risk, your sizing, and your decisions.