Position size: the choice that keeps you in the game
How much to put into one coin, why it matters more than which coin you pick, and the maths of losing streaks.
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Before entries, exits or any trick, learn this one. Position size is how much SOL you put into a single trade. It decides whether a bad week is a lesson or the end of your account.
Start with the honest odds. Most memecoins go to zero and most people who trade them lose money. Of more than 7 million coins launched on pump.fun by early 2025, only about 97,000 still had even $1,000 of liquidity, according to a Solidus Labs report. A Dune analysis reported by Decrypt in January 2025 found that only about 0.4% of pump.fun wallets had made $10,000 or more in profit. CoinGecko counted pump.fun wallets month by month and found that most of them closed out at a loss in almost every month of 2024 and 2025. Early 2026 was kinder, but those counts only see coins that were sold, not the ones still held at a loss. And a study of Brazilian day traders who kept at it for 300 days or more found that 97% of them lost money.
You are not the exception by default. Your size is what lets you survive long enough to find out if you are any good.
Your bankroll
Your bankroll is the SOL you have set aside for memecoins. Not your rent, not your savings. Money you could lose completely and still be fine. Every size rule below is a slice of that number.
Size as if the coin goes to zero
Classic trading education says to risk only 1% to 2% of your account on any one trade, measured from where your stop-loss would sell. Memecoins break that maths. A rug pull or a crash in a single moment can jump straight past your stop. So ask a blunter question before every buy: if this coin went to zero in the next minute, how much would I lose? That answer is your real risk, and it should be small.
Two traders, one bad run (made-up numbers)
Ana and Ben each start with a 10 SOL bankroll. Ana puts 2 SOL into every coin, a fifth of her bankroll. Ben puts 0.25 SOL into every coin. Both hit the same bad run: ten coins in a row go to zero.
- Step 1: After 5 losses Ana has nothing left. She is out before trade 6.
- Step 2: After 10 losses Ben is down 2.5 SOL and still has 7.5 SOL.
- Step 3: Trade 11 does 10x. Ben's 0.25 SOL becomes 2.5 SOL and he is back to about 9.75 SOL. Ana is not there to see it.
Losing streaks are normal
Even a good memecoin strategy loses most of its trades. Say you win 3 trades out of 10. We simulated 20,000 runs of 100 trades at that win rate. More than half of them had a streak of 10 losses or more in a row, and 86% had a streak of at least 8. That is not bad luck. It is what a 30% win rate looks like. Size so the streak you will meet does not finish you.
Why big losses are so hard to undo
| If your bankroll falls by | You need this gain to get back |
|---|---|
| 10% | 11% |
| 25% | 33% |
| 50% | 100% |
| 75% | 300% |
| 90% | 900% |
A hole is much harder to climb out of than it was to fall into. That is why protecting the bankroll comes before chasing the next winner.
Too small is a trap too
Fees punish tiny trades. Every buy and every sell pays the platform's fee, the pool's fee, a network fee and a tip, and those last two barely change with the size of the trade. Say your platform takes 1% each way, which is common on Solana trading apps (as of October 2026 GMGN lists 1% a trade, and Axiom 0.75% to 0.95% after its cashback, depending on your tier), and the network fee and tip come to about 0.002 SOL each way.
| Trade size | Cost of one buy and one sell | Share of the trade |
|---|---|---|
| 0.05 SOL | about 0.005 SOL | about 10% |
| 0.5 SOL | about 0.014 SOL | about 2.8% |
| 2 SOL | about 0.044 SOL | about 2.2% |
At 0.05 SOL a coin has to rise about 10% just for you to break even, and about 13% if it is still on its pump.fun curve, which takes another 1.25% on every buy and every sell. Pick a size big enough that fees are a small slice, and small enough that a zero does not hurt.
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This guide is for learning. It is not financial advice. Most memecoins go to zero and most people who trade them lose money. Only ever trade what you can afford to lose.