Risk Management

Automated trading hands a machine access to your money, so capital protection is built into every trade before a single order goes out. TTMT never uses the lot size a signal posts — it sizes every trade from your own settings — and it refuses prices that would put you at obvious risk. This page covers position sizing, the hard caps you can't exceed, the stop-loss safety checks, and the drawdown guidance that nudges you when a day goes badly.

Never trust signal volume

This is the most important safety rule on the platform. TTMT never uses the lot size from a signal provider's message. Every trade's volume is calculated fresh from your own configured sizing settings.

A provider might say "Buy 5.0 lots GOLD" — TTMT ignores the "5.0 lots" entirely and works out the right volume from your account balance, your risk setting, and the stop-loss distance. If your settings put the correct size at 0.05 lots, that's what trades. The 5.0 lots a careless provider posted, which could be a hundred times your intended size, never touches your account.

Position sizing

TTMT sizes every trade from your own settings, on the Position Sizing page (Settings → Position Sizing). You pick one of two modes, and whichever you choose, the number you set is the total for the trade — TTMT splits it across your entry layers (see Order Execution), it doesn't open a fresh position per layer.

Mode	You set	TTMT sizes so that…
Fixed Lots	A static lot size (e.g. 0.10)	every trade is exactly that size — dollar risk moves with the stop distance
% of Balance	A share of your balance to risk (e.g. 1%)	a stop-out costs about that share — the lot moves with the stop distance so the risk doesn't

Fixed Lots

You set a static lot size (e.g. 0.10 lots, range 0.01–100) and that's the total volume of every trade, regardless of stop distance or balance. Predictable and simple: you always know how big a position will be before it opens. The trade-off is that your dollar risk moves with the stop — a 100-pip stop risks ten times more than a 10-pip stop on the same lot.

If you use Fixed Lots, a smart way to decide the lot is to size it so a typical stop-loss costs roughly 1–2% of your balance. Work it out once, set the lot, and re-tune it by hand when your balance changes. (Or use % of Balance below, which does exactly this on every trade automatically.)

Pick your lot = (Balance x Target Risk %) / (Typical SL Distance x Contract Size)

Where:
  Target Risk % = the share of balance you're comfortable losing (e.g. 1%)
  Contract Size = from your broker's symbol spec
                  (100,000 for forex, 100 for gold, etc.)

Worked example — choosing the lot

Account: $10,000 | Target: 1% ($100) | Typical SL: 200 pips on EURUSD

Risk budget   = $10,000 x 1%       = $100
Contract Size = 100,000
SL Distance   = 0.0200
Fixed lot     = $100 / (0.0200 x 100,000) = 0.05 lots

Set 0.05 lots and a 200-pip stop costs about $100. The math is a planning tool — once set, the lot is fixed, so a tighter stop risks less and a wider stop risks more. Re-run it when your balance moves meaningfully.

% of Balance

Instead of a fixed lot, you set a risk percentage of your account balance (range 0.1%–10%), and TTMT does the lot math for you on every trade. It works backwards from the signal's stop-loss distance to the total lot size that would lose about that percentage if the stop is hit — so a wider stop produces a smaller position and a tighter stop a larger one, and your dollar risk stays roughly constant however far away the stop sits. It is the mirror image of Fixed Lots: there the lot is constant and the dollar risk varies; here the dollar risk is constant and the lot varies.

It works across every asset class — forex, metals, indices, crypto — converting to your account's base currency, so "1% of balance" means the same dollar risk on gold as on EUR/USD. As you type your percentage, the page shows the resulting Risk per Trade in your account currency, so you see the dollar figure before you save.

Worked example — same risk, two stops

Balance: $10,000 | Risk: 1% ($100). A EUR/USD signal with a 200-pip stop sizes to about 0.05 lots; a tighter 50-pip stop on the same pair sizes to about 0.20 lots. Either way a stop-out costs about $100 — the lot changed so that the risk didn't. Switch to Fixed Lots at 0.10 and those same two signals would risk about $200 and $50 instead.

% of Balance never rounds up into more risk

Small accounts and tight stops can collide with your broker's minimum lot. TTMT will not quietly place a larger position than your percentage implies. If the smallest lot your broker allows would risk meaningfully more than your target (beyond a small tolerance), TTMT rejects the trade rather than over-risk you — no orders are placed and no exposure is taken — and notifies you to raise your risk %, check any max-volume cap, add balance, or use Fixed Lots for that symbol. A trade is also rejected if the stop-loss distance is too small to size against safely.

Dollar risk vs. a dollar cap

Fixed Lots aside, if you want a single trade's loss capped at an exact dollar figure regardless of stop distance, that is the per-trade P&L cap (see below), not a sizing mode — it closes the whole trade at a dollar amount. For a ceiling on your whole day, add a per-account daily-loss limit as well.

Per-asset SL/TP defaults

Different instruments have different volatility, so TTMT lets you set fallback values per asset class in Settings → Entries & Targets → Per-Asset Risk & Default TP/SL Overrides. These are fallbacks — they fill in values a signal omits; they are not an extra layer that competes with your other settings. A signal's own stop and targets are used unless you've turned on the matching override (see Override Modes), and a channel's assigned profile can override the account value.

Available asset classes:

• Forex Majors (EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, etc.)
• Forex Minors (EURGBP, AUDNZD, etc.)
• Metals (XAUUSD, XAGUSD)
• Indices (NAS100, US30, SPX500, DAX)
• Crypto (BTCUSD, ETHUSD)

Each asset class can set:

Field	What it does
Volume mode	Use Global (inherit your base sizing), Fixed Lots, Risk % of balance, or Fixed $ risk — set per class
Max volume (lots)	A hard cap on the lot size for this asset class
Default Stop Loss (pips)	Fallback stop when a signal omits one (1–500)
Default TP1–TP6 (pips)	Fallback take-profit distances when a signal omits them (1–500 each)

Example configuration

Asset Class	Volume mode	Max volume	Default SL
Forex Majors	Fixed Lots 0.10	1.0 lots	50 pips
Metals	Use Global	0.50 lots	80 pips
Indices	Fixed Lots 0.05	0.10 lots	120 pips

Total-volume safety ceiling

Regardless of your sizing settings, TTMT enforces a platform safety ceiling on the total size of any single trade. This is a backstop, not something you configure — if a mis-sized input would produce an implausibly large position, TTMT clamps it back before any order leaves the platform. (Higher internal ceilings can exist for special accounts, so treat this as a safety backstop rather than a single published number.)

WARNING

Your per-asset max-volume caps apply on top of the platform ceiling. The lower of the two always wins.

Without this backstop, a single mis-sized signal — or a fixed lot set too large for the account — could open a position large enough to blow the account on one adverse move. The ceiling is the last line of defense before an order leaves the platform. This is the only place the backstop is explained in full; the order pages link here.

Stop-loss safety checks

Missing stop-loss

If a signal arrives with no stop, TTMT treats it as infinite risk and applies the behavior you've chosen:

Behavior	Action
Use default SL	Apply your configured default stop distance. A deliberately conservative emergency stop — set it wide enough to survive normal volatility.
Skip trade	Reject the signal entirely. The most conservative option.
Correct SL	Derive a sensible stop from the entry zone and take-profit distances.

Without this, a "BUY GOLD, TP soon" signal with no stop would ride with nothing protecting it — one reversal could wipe the position. With it, the trade either gets your emergency stop or is skipped.

Bad stop-loss detection

TTMT catches several dangerous stop conditions and corrects or rejects them:

• Wrong-side stop — a BUY with the stop above entry (it would close instantly at a loss).
• Stop inside the entry zone — physically impossible; the stop would sit among your own pending orders.
• Stop too far — the stop sits more than 5 times the distance to your farthest take-profit. The check is zone-aware, so a deep limit waiting for a retracement isn't wrongly flagged. A stop this far out means a tiny reward against an enormous risk.

These are separate from the decimal-slip guard that catches fat-fingered prices (a value off by a factor of ten or more), which is covered on Signal Processing.

An implausibly wide entry zone is also rejected: if the zone spans more than five times your stop distance, a fill at the deepest layer would already be past the stop. See How Your Entry Zone Is Decided for what happens when a zone is rejected.

Before every trade: the final checks

Every trade passes five pre-trade checks before any orders are submitted:

1. Connection healthy — your MetaTrader connection is active.
2. Symbol available — your broker offers this symbol.
3. Volume within caps — the calculated size is inside the hard caps.
4. Margin sufficient — there's enough free margin for the trade.
5. No Automatic Safety Pause — the account isn't in a protective pause.

The Automatic Safety Pause stops trading on an account after repeated failures during a broker outage or connectivity problem, so a string of errors can't snowball into runaway losses. See Connection Resilience.

Per-trade P&L cap — close one trade at a dollar amount

The per-trade P&L cap is a dollar ceiling on a single trade's result — TTMT closes the whole trade automatically the moment its combined profit or loss reaches the figure you set. It is not a stop-loss (that protects one position at a price) and it is not the daily-loss limit (that protects your whole account across a day) — it sits between the two, bounding what any one trade can win or lose in dollars.

Quick start

Set it in Settings → Risk Limits → Per-Trade P&L Limit. Flip the switch on and TTMT suggests a loss and a profit figure from your own recent trading — accept them or type your own. Leave either field blank to skip that side. It's available on every plan.

Why a stop-loss isn't the whole story

Your broker stop-loss protects each position one at a time. But TTMT spreads a single signal across a grid of layered entries — up to 36 orders across as many as 6 layers (see Order Execution). On a deep retracement, several of those layers fill, and your real exposure is the sum of every filled position, not any one stop. The per-trade cap is the only setting that watches that combined total.

Tool	What it caps	Scope
Stop-loss	One position, at a price	A single leg of the trade
Per-trade P&L cap	One trade's combined profit/loss, in dollars	All of that trade's layers together
Daily-loss limit (Risk Limits)	Your account's losses for the day	The whole account, per session

Worked example — capping a layered trade

You set a $60 loss cap per trade. A GOLD buy opens across four layers — a market entry plus three deeper limit orders — and as price dips, all four fill. You now hold four positions on this one trade, each with its own stop. Individually none has hit its stop, but together they're down −$62. The per-trade cap reads the combined −$62, sees it past your −$60 ceiling, and closes all four positions at once. No single stop had to be reached.

Setting your loss and profit caps

The two sides are independent — set a loss cap, a profit cap, both, or neither:

• Loss cap — closes the trade once its combined loss reaches your amount (for example, close at −$50). Your dollar-loss safety net for one trade.
• Profit cap — closes the trade once its combined profit reaches your amount (for example, close at +$100). A clean way to take a fixed dollar profit rather than waiting on take-profit prices that shift as targets redistribute (see TP Redistribution).

Amounts are in your account's base currency — the currency your broker reports your balance in — and there's no currency conversion. When you first switch the limit on, TTMT pre-fills a suggested loss and profit drawn from your last 30 days of trades (roughly 1.5x your average losing trade and 2x your average winning trade, with small floors if you're new). The suggestion is a starting point — edit it freely.

When the cap fires

Step by step:

1. It watches continuously — TTMT re-totals the trade's profit and loss roughly once a second from your live positions, plus anything already banked from partial closes.
2. A momentary spike won't trip it — a floating loss or profit has to hold past your cap for a moment before TTMT acts, so a one-tick spread spike can't close you out. A real close (a partial taking profit, or a position hitting its stop) counts immediately.
3. It closes the whole trade — every open position on that trade is closed together. If the broker connection is briefly unhealthy, or the trade is mid-rebalance, TTMT waits and retries on the next check rather than acting on stale prices.
4. It shows in your logs — the trade lands in your Trade Log with a Loss limit chip (red) or a Profit target chip (green), and the trade's detail view shows the Auto-close at amount it was watching. You can preview the cap on any message in the Signal Tester before it ever trades.

A per-trade close is final

When a trade closes by its P&L cap, that trade is done — there's no Resume or Recalibrate the way there is for the daily Risk Limit. The cap protects that one trade and then steps aside; your other open trades and your channels keep running normally.

The cap is locked when the trade opens

Your cap is captured the instant a trade opens and frozen for that trade's life. If you later raise, lower, or switch off the limit, trades already running keep the cap they opened with — only trades opened after you Save Changes use the new value. This is deliberate: a setting you change today can never silently re-arm or disarm a trade that's already live. If you turn the limit off while trades are open, TTMT asks you to confirm, then leaves those open trades on their original caps and applies the change to new trades only.

Per-channel caps

Like most settings, a channel's config profile can override your account default. In a profile's Profit Protection section, Per-Trade P&L Limit is an overridable field — tighten the loss cap on a noisy channel, or set a higher profit target on a strong one, without touching your global default. See Creating Config Profiles for the inherit-vs-override pattern.

Daily-loss protection (Risk Limits)

Where the per-trade cap above guards a single trade, the per-account daily-loss limit guards your whole account across a day — it automatically halts new trades, and optionally closes open ones, once your day's losses cross it. This is the account-wide enforced auto-cap: when it triggers, trading actually stops. Risk Limits are account-only — they are set per account and a channel profile never overrides them. It's covered in full, including how to resume and recalibrate after a deposit or withdrawal, on Risk Limits.

Loss-streak risk reduction (experimental)

Separately from the caps above, TTMT has an experimental control that shrinks your position size automatically after a run of losing trades on a given channel-and-account pairing, then restores it after a win. It's off by default and applies on top of your ordinary sizing. Because it changes how much you risk after a bad streak, test it on a demo account before using it on live capital. See Loss-Streak Risk Reduction for the full behavior, floors, and reset modes.

Recovery Guidance (advisory)

Recovery Guidance is an advisory banner on your dashboard — it suggests, it does not enforce. It appears when today's loss reaches a share of your current account balance, or after two or more losing trades in a row, and it offers gentle prompts: check market conditions, review your channels, consider downsizing. It auto-hides once you're no longer in drawdown and can be dismissed for the session.

Severity	Trigger	What it suggests
Minor	Today's loss ≥ 10% of current balance (or 2+ losing trades)	Check whether market conditions favor your strategy.
Big	Today's loss ≥ 20% of current balance	Above, plus review your signal sources for quality.
Major	Today's loss ≥ 40% of current balance	Above, plus consider downsizing position size temporarily.

The math is today's profit-and-loss against your current balance — not your starting or peak balance. A $10,000 account down $1,100 today (11%) shows the Minor banner suggesting a market check; tomorrow, with the day reset, it's gone.

Advisory vs enforced

Recovery Guidance suggests; Risk Limits enforces. The same trader who set a $1,500 daily-loss limit would have trading actually halt at −$1,500, where Recovery Guidance only advised. If you want trading to stop after a bad day, set a daily-loss limit — see Risk Limits.

Emergency controls

Kill switch. The dashboard's kill switch has two scopes: Close all sweeps every open position on the account, including manual trades, while Close TTMT only leaves your manual trades untouched. It fires the closes concurrently — every position is sent at once for the fastest possible exit — and a single failed close doesn't stop the rest of the sweep.

Channel pausing. Pause an individual channel-account assignment at any time to stop its signals without touching your other channels. It takes effect immediately.

See Emergency Controls for the full treatment.

How your settings combine

For most settings, the rule is simple: a channel's profile value wins; if it has none, your account setting applies. Signal-provided values are used directly when you haven't overridden them. The per-asset defaults above only fill in values a signal omits — they're a fallback, not a tier that overrides your account.

Volume is the one thing that's never inherited from a signal — it's always computed from your sizing settings. See Settings Inheritance and Applying Profiles for the full model.

Golden Rule

Never risk more than you can afford to lose. For most traders, 1–2% per trade is a sensible maximum.

Ideal Settings & Trading Strategy

Scenario 1 — Capital-Preservation Beginner ($5k personal)

Setup: New live trader, $5,000 account, one well-rated channel.

Settings:

• Position sizing: Fixed Lots, 0.10 (≈1% of a $5k account on a 50-pip stop)
• Per-asset default stop: conservative (50 pips forex, 80 pips gold)
• Per-trade P&L cap: on, ~$50 loss (accept the suggested figure)
• Daily-loss limit: on, ~5% ($250)
• Recovery Guidance: leave enabled (it's automatic)

Why: A 0.10-lot fixed size keeps any single loss small on a $5k balance, a small per-trade cap stops one runaway trade from eating the day, and a 5% daily-loss halt stops a bad day from compounding before you notice. Conservative default stops protect signals that omit one.

Watch for: A tight daily limit can halt you mid-session on a normal drawdown — set it high enough to ride normal variance.

Switch when: You're consistently green and want more size — Scenario 2.

Scenario 2 — Balanced Moderate ($50k personal)

Setup: Experienced trader, $50,000 account, 3–4 channels.

Settings:

• Position sizing: Fixed Lots, 0.50 (≈1% of a $50k account on a 100-pip stop)
• Per-asset max caps (forex 1.0 lot, gold 0.5 lot)
• Per-asset stop/target defaults tuned per class (Forex Majors / Metals / Indices)
• Daily-loss limit: on, ~8–10%
• Override SL on for sloppy channels

Why: A 0.50-lot base keeps a typical loss near 1% of a $50k balance, per-asset caps prevent over-leverage on volatile instruments, and a moderate daily limit gives room without abandoning the safety net.

Watch for: Several channels firing the same direction can stack exposure beyond what one trade implies — watch your margin.

Switch when: You move to a funded prop account with hard external rules — Scenario 3.

Scenario 3 — Prop-Firm Drawdown Discipline ($200k prop)

Setup: $200,000 funded prop account with a strict daily-loss rule and a max-drawdown rule.

Settings:

• Position sizing: Fixed Lots, 1.0 (≈0.5% of a $200k account on a 100-pip stop) — tuned so a typical loss stays well inside the firm's dollar limits
• Per-asset max caps tight on every class (well below the platform safety ceiling)
• Per-trade P&L cap: on, a tight loss cap so no single layered trade eats a large slice of the daily allowance
• Daily-loss limit: set below the firm's daily rule, with close-all on breach
• Override SL on everywhere (no naked trades allowed)

Why: Prop rules are unforgiving. Setting your own daily-loss halt inside the firm's limit means TTMT stops you before the firm does.

Watch for: Layered entries fill more on deep retracements — your worst-case exposure is the deepest fill, not the market layer. Size to the deepest fill.

Switch when: You move to a funded account with looser rules — Scenario 2.

Related pages

• Risk Limits — the enforced daily-loss halt, resume, and recalibrate.
• Loss-Streak Risk Reduction — the experimental after-a-loss sizing control.
• Order Execution — how sizing feeds the layered entry.
• Order Management — volume calculation details and worked numbers.
• Signal Processing — the safety checks that filter risky signals.
• Breakeven Management — locking in profit after TP1.
• Emergency Controls — the kill switch in depth.