Set Your Risk Caps Before Your First Trade

Your risk caps apply to every order your bot places, regardless of what a signal says. Set them now, while you're on paper, so you can see them work before real money is involved.

Position size

Position size is how much your bot trades on each signal. Keep it at the minimum through your first week. Increase it once you've seen how your community's signals behave in your account.

Daily loss cap

Your daily loss cap pauses the bot for the rest of the day once losses reach an amount you set. Open Bot Builder > Risk Management, set the amount, and choose a mode:

• Net P&L: the bot pauses when your overall P&L for the day reaches the limit. Wins offset losses.
• Accumulated Losses: the bot pauses when your losing trades add up to the limit, regardless of wins. This protects gains on days that start well.

When you hit the cap, the bot opens no new positions, existing positions keep their exits, and the bot resets at the start of the next trading day. The Daily Loss Limits guide has a worked example.

Skip Days

Skip Days keep your bot from trading on days that tend to move markets. In the bot's Trading Schedule step, you can skip US market holiday weeks, FOMC meeting days, major economic releases such as CPI and NFP, and specific days of the week.

A place to start

If your community recommends default caps, start with those. Otherwise, set a daily loss cap you'd be comfortable losing in a single day. Keep your position size at the minimum until you've watched five to 10 signals on paper.

When you're ready to go live

Review your paper results in Signal History first. When the last several executions look the way you expect, turn off paper trading mode under Settings > Execution. The switch is immediate, and open paper positions don't carry over to your live account.