Equity Guard

Equity Guard watches an account's equity and acts the moment it crosses a line you set. Depending on the action you pick, it emails you, pauses copying as well, or also closes every position. You set it up in the app, on the account's Equity Guard tab. The API can't read or change guards yet, but it shows what a guard does to copying: in the follower status and in copy events.

For what each rule does on a prop firm account, with a worked example, see how Equity Guard works.

Rules

A guard has up to three rules. Each one is an amount in the account's currency or a percentage of the starting balance.

Each rule has its own action:

• The starting balance is what percentages are measured from. Equity Guard reads it from the first deposit in the account's history, and you can change it.
• The day for the daily loss limit starts at the broker's midnight, on the server time its MetaTrader charts show, or at a time and time zone you pick. The limit counts down from the balance when the day began, or from the higher of balance and equity then.
• Each rule acts once. After it has fired, it waits until you resume the guard in the app. A daily loss limit can also let go by itself when the next day starts.
• Closing happens at the market price, and Equity Guard keeps trying until the account is flat. In a fast market a fill can land past the line, so set your lines a little inside your firm's limits.
• An account connected with its investor password can't trade, so its guard only alerts.

Paused followers

A pause holds back new copies. Copies that are already open stay open, and still follow the master's closes and changes. Which followers are held back depends on whose guard paused:

• A follower's own guard pauses copying to that follower only.
• A master's guard pauses copying from that master, to every follower of every copier that uses it.

While Equity Guard holds a follower back, its status says so. Its is_active stays true. That field is your own pause, and the guard doesn't change it.

{
  "object": "follower",
  "is_active": true,
  "status": {
    "state": "paused",
    "message": "Paused by Equity Guard.",
    "open_copies": 0,
    "engine_online": true
  }
}

So if a follower's state is paused while both the follower and its copier have is_active: true, Equity Guard has paused it. When the guard is resumed, or a daily loss limit's next day starts, state goes back to copying within seconds.

const copier = await att("GET", "/copiers/c7d1e5f2-3a4b-4c6d-8e9f-0a1b2c3d4e5f");
for (const follower of copier.followers) {
  const held = copier.is_active && follower.is_active && follower.status?.state === "paused";
  if (held) console.log(`${follower.account.name}: paused by Equity Guard`);
}

The examples use the att helper from the Quickstart.

Skipped trades

Trades the master opens while a follower is held back aren't copied, not even after the guard is resumed. Pending orders it places then aren't placed on the follower either. Each such trade is a skip copy event with the message Opened while Equity Guard had copying paused.

Closed copies

When a guard closes positions, the copies involved close too. Each closed copy is a close copy event:

• On a master, the master's positions close, and the copier closes their copies, as it does for any close on the master.
• On a follower, its copies are closed on the account directly. Their close events say Closed on the follower account (stop loss, take profit, by hand or by Equity Guard).