Emergency Controls

Automation handles the routine; emergencies need a human at the controls. When a channel goes wrong, a market gaps, or you simply want out, TTMT gives you a kill switch to flatten positions in one click and a daily-loss halt that acts on its own. This page covers those controls, the advisory guidance that warns you before things get bad, and the status indicators that tell you whether to act or wait.

Kill Switch

The kill switch is a one-click control that closes open positions immediately. It is in the dashboard header — the place you are most likely to be when you need it. It operates on your active account, and when not scoped to a single account it can sweep all of your active accounts at once.

Two Scopes

Scope	What It Closes	When to Use
All	Every open position on the account, including trades you placed manually	Broker emergency, margin call imminent, full exit needed
TTMT Only	Only positions TTMT opened	A TTMT-specific issue; you want to preserve your manual trades

"TTMT Only" tells TTMT-opened positions apart from your own by a per-account tag set when the account was connected. The scope you pick is stated plainly in the confirmation dialog, so there is no ambiguity about what closes.

Confirmation Dialog

The kill switch never fires from a single accidental tap. The dialog states the chosen scope ("Close ALL positions" or "Close TTMT-managed positions only"), shows how many positions will be affected, and requires a deliberate confirming click.

The kill switch is irreversible

Once confirmed, all affected positions close at market price. There is no undo. Use it only when you genuinely need to exit immediately.

How It Closes

All positions are closed at the same time, not one after another. If you have 20 positions open, closing them one by one could take minutes; closing them together completes in seconds. If an individual closure fails, TTMT keeps closing the rest and reports exactly which ones failed rather than stopping at the first error. While the sweep runs, live position updates pause to avoid a breakeven or take-profit shift colliding with the closure, and the dashboard refreshes as each position confirms closed.

When the halt fires the kill switch

If Risk Limits halts your account with "Halt + close all" on, it runs this same close-all sweep. Those auto-closed trades carry the risk_limit_hit end-reason chip in your Trade Log, so you can tell them apart from a manual kill switch.

Without the kill switch: a flash spike puts 12 positions deep underwater. Closing each by hand takes minutes you do not have. The kill switch flattens all 12 in one click.

Risk Limits: The Automatic Halt

Risk Limits is a per-account daily-loss cap that halts trading automatically when your day's losses cross a line you set. It is the one emergency control that acts without you.

It moves through three actions. Halt fires on its own when your session loss (or an optional profit target) crosses your threshold, blocking new trades. Resume clears the halt and keeps the day's counters intact, so you pick up where you halted. Recalibrate re-anchors the limit to your current equity after a deposit or withdrawal. With "Halt + close all" on, a halt also runs the kill-switch close-all sweep.

Full setup, the resume-vs-recalibrate distinction, and account-size strategies live on the Risk Limits page.

Recovery Guidance (advisory only)

Recovery Guidance is a banner that appears when you are having a losing day and offers severity-appropriate advice. It only informs and suggests — it never closes a trade or blocks a signal.

When It Triggers

Recovery Guidance fires when today's P&L is negative and your loss as a share of your current balance reaches a threshold. Loss percentage is |today's loss| / current balance × 100:

Today's Loss	Severity	What Happens
10%	Informational	A gentle note with your current loss percentage
20%	Caution	A warning with suggested actions (reduce risk, review your channels)
40%	Critical	A strong recommendation to pause and review before trading more

It measures today's loss against your current balance — it is not a drawdown from a lifetime peak.

What Each Level Suggests

10% (informational). Worth monitoring. Review recent losing trades for a pattern, check whether a specific channel is underperforming, and consider whether your risk settings still fit.

20% (caution). A significant day that warrants attention. Reduce risk per trade, pause underperforming channels, and review your risk settings — or pause until you have looked at what is happening.

40% (critical). Direct and urgent. Pause trading, consider the kill switch to close open positions, review every channel's performance, and do not increase risk to "recover" the loss.

A 40% loss needs a 67% gain to recover

The deeper the loss, the harder the climb back. A 40% drawdown requires a 67% gain just to return to the starting balance. Reacting to the earlier 10% and 20% banners is how you avoid ever testing the 40% one.

Recovery Guidance only advises

It will never close a trade or stop a signal on its own — that is what Risk Limits does. If you want automatic protection, enable Risk Limits.

Recovery Guidance vs Risk Limits: a trader without Risk Limits enabled sees the 20% caution banner — it is advice, and nothing stops trading. A trader with Risk Limits on at a 5% daily cap never reaches 20%, because the halt already fired at 5%.

Service Health Indicators

The dashboard header shows status dropdowns that stay visible on every page: Trading, Signal, and System Health. Each uses the same color language — green is healthy, yellow is degraded or recovering, red is a problem.

Trading Status reflects your connection and whether the automatic safety pause is active; the dropdown shows connection state, safety-pause state, active trade count, and the last execution time. Signal Status shows whether signals are processing or backing up — pending count, recent signals, and the last signal time. System Health is a composite of your broker connection: it is green only when the connection is up, connected through to your broker, receiving live prices, and in sync. If any one of those is failing, it is not green — a connection that looks "connected" but stopped streaming prices is not healthy.

Below the header, a compact status strip keeps service uptime, the last sync time, and the active account always in view.

Reconnect When Health Stays Red

When broker health stays red for several minutes, the dashboard surfaces a clickable Reconnect button to re-establish the connection. It is a real emergency control, but it is user-in-the-loop: you click it, and nothing reconnects on its own. A click typically restores the live feed in seconds.

Its full coverage — when it appears, what it does, and when to wait instead — lives on Connection Issues.

Reconnect in practice: health goes red for six minutes during a quiet session and the Reconnect button appears. One click restores the live feed in seconds, instead of waiting indefinitely.

Stale-Data Warning

Real-time position data is only useful if it is actually real-time. When the connection to your broker is delayed or briefly interrupted, the positions and P&L in the Live View can be outdated. Acting on stale data is dangerous, so TTMT flags it.

When data is flagged as stale, a banner appears at the top of the Live View. It cannot be dismissed — it clears automatically when sync resumes — and uses warning styling to draw attention without alarm.

Example banner

Data may be outdated. The connection to your trading account is being re-established. Position data shown below may not reflect current market conditions. Avoid making trading decisions until synchronization resumes.

What to do when you see it:

1. Do not panic. Your positions are still protected by their stop losses and trailing stops at the broker — those run independently of this connection.
2. Avoid manual changes based on the displayed data; it may be stale.
3. Wait for automatic recovery. TTMT reconnects and resynchronizes on its own.
4. Check System Health for more detail.

Stale banner in practice: the Live View shows positions that look open during a sync gap, and the banner warns you not to act. The broker-side stops were managing everything correctly the whole time.

Using Emergency Controls Together

Scenario: Rapid Account Drawdown

If you have Risk Limits enabled, this barely happens — the halt fires at your cap. If you do not, Recovery Guidance triggers its caution banner as losses accumulate. You check the health indicators (all green — this is market movement, not a system failure), review the Live View, and decide to exit. You activate the kill switch with "TTMT Only" scope to close automated positions while preserving any manual trades, then pause the channels that caused the damage.

Scenario: Connection Issues During a Volatile Market

The stale-data banner appears and System Health shows the broker connection reconnecting. You do not use the kill switch, because your positions have broker-side stops that keep protecting them independently. The connection recovers, the banner clears, and you verify in the Live View that every stop is intact and nothing closed unexpectedly.

Scenario: Suspected System Failure

Trading Status turns red, System Health flags a problem, and the stale-data banner is showing. Your positions are still protected by their broker-side stops, but no new signals process. You decide whether to wait for automatic recovery, click Reconnect if it is offered, or use the kill switch to exit as a precaution.

Summary

Control	Acts on its own?	What it does
Risk Limits halt	Yes	Auto-halts at your daily-loss cap; optional close-all
Kill Switch	No — one click	Immediate close-all, two scopes
Recovery Guidance	No — advisory	Warns at 10/20/40% of today's loss vs current balance
Health Indicators	Passive	Live status in the header
Reconnect	No — one click, if offered	Re-establish a stuck connection
Stale-Data Warning	Passive	Flags outdated Live View data

The best emergency is one that never happens

TTMT's automatic safety systems — the automatic safety pause, speed control, and Risk Limits as a daily backstop — are designed to prevent situations that need manual intervention. These controls are a final safety net, not a regular part of your trading workflow.

Ideal Settings & Trading Strategy

These scenarios are about how you wire the controls together — your halt posture plus your kill-switch habits, calibrated by account size. For the exact Risk Limits values, see the Risk Limits page.

Scenario 1 — Capital-Preservation Solo Trader ($5k)

Setup: Small live account, low tolerance for a bad day, checks the dashboard a few times daily.

Posture:

• Risk Limits: On, 3% daily loss, On Breach = Halt + close all
• Kill switch: keep "TTMT Only" as your mental default; reserve "All" for true emergencies
• Recovery Guidance: treat the 10% banner as a hard stop-and-review prompt

Why: On a small account the automatic halt is your real safety net and the kill switch is the backup. Reacting to the first (10%) advisory keeps you from ever testing the deeper thresholds.

Watch for: Auto-flatten can exit a trade that was about to recover. Accept that as the price of a guaranteed small loss day.

Switch when: The account grows and you can stomach normal drawdowns — move to Scenario 2's looser, alert-first posture.

Scenario 2 — Balanced Active Trader ($50k)

Setup: Mid-size account, several channels, monitors intraday, comfortable letting winners run.

Posture:

• Risk Limits: On, 5% daily loss, On Breach = Halt new trades only
• Kill switch: "TTMT Only" for TTMT-specific problems; reach for "All" only on a genuine market or broker emergency
• Recovery Guidance: use the 20% caution banner as the trigger to pause underperforming channels

Why: A 5% alert-only halt stops new exposure without flattening profitable open trades. The kill switch stays a deliberate manual choice, and Recovery Guidance fills the gap below the halt with channel-level discipline.

Watch for: Alert-only means open losers keep running after a halt. Check the Live View, and consider a manual "TTMT Only" kill switch if those positions are the problem.

Switch when: You take on prop-firm capital with hard rules — switch to Scenario 3's fixed, auto-flatten posture.

Scenario 3 — Prop-Firm / Funded Trader ($200k)

Setup: Funded account with a hard daily-drawdown rule; a breach ends the account.

Posture:

• Risk Limits: On, daily loss in fixed mode set below the firm's hard dollar line, On Breach = Halt + close all
• Optional daily profit target to satisfy a consistency rule
• Kill switch: "All" scope is appropriate here, since a funded account should not carry untracked manual trades
• Recovery Guidance: secondary — the enforced halt should fire long before the advisory thresholds matter

Why: On funded capital the automatic, auto-flattening halt is the primary defense and the kill switch is the manual override. The fixed-dollar cap below the firm line gives the close-all time to execute before the broker-side breach.

Watch for: A fast gap can carry the realized loss slightly past your software trigger — the buffer below the firm's line absorbs this. Never set them equal.

Switch when: You scale to a larger funded account — recalibrate the fixed cap to the new firm rule after the balance changes.

Related Pages

• Risk Limits — the canonical daily-loss halt reference
• Connection Issues — the Reconnect banner's full home
• Connection Resilience — automatic reconnection behind the scenes
• Position Protection — broker-side stops that keep protecting you during outages
• Trade Log — where the risk_limit_hit chip appears after an auto-flatten