How this is put together
This page collects what the site's calculators run on and where the data comes from.
This page collects what the site's calculators run on and where the data comes from. If a figure here differs from your broker's own calculation, the reason is almost always one of the rows below — the contract size, the price step, or the conversion rate.
Formulas
| What is calculated | How |
|---|---|
| Pip value | price step × contract size × volume in lots, converted to the account currency |
| Position size | (balance × risk %) ÷ (stop in pips × pip value per lot) |
| Required margin | position notional ÷ leverage; for currency pairs the notional is counted in the base currency, for other instruments at the current price |
| Profit and loss | price difference × contract size × volume, with the trade direction applied |
| Overnight cost | swap rate × pip value × volume × number of nights |
The same formulas run when the page is built and when you change a field in the browser: the tables and the calculator share one implementation, so they cannot drift apart.
This connects directly to Market hours in local time and to How to start.
Instrument specifications
| Instrument | Contract | Price step | Quote currency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold (XAU/USD) | 100 | 0.01 | USD |
| EUR/USD | 100 000 | 0.0001 | USD |
| USD/ZAR | 100 000 | 0.0001 | ZAR |
| Nasdaq 100 | 1 | 1.0 | USD |
Exchange rates
Conversion into the account currency (ZAR) uses rates as of 2026-09-11. Currencies in use: USD, ZAR. Sources: ecb. Rates refresh automatically, and when the data is older than three days the page says so next to the result instead of presenting a stale number as current.
What these calculations leave out
The calculators show the arithmetic of a position, not the outcome of a trade at a particular broker. Commission, slippage, the spread at the moment of execution and account-level limits sit outside them. Treat the result as an order of magnitude.
How we handle facts
Every statement on this site rests on a source with a date. Where a source is secondary, or a value has not been confirmed against the original, the text says so. Pages we have no data for are not written.