Copy Trading Bracket & OCO Orders (TP/SL)
Category: Copy Trading | Last updated: 2026-10-02 | Reading time: 5 min read
Bracket and OCO Orders in One Minute
A bracket order is an entry (market, limit or stop) with a take-profit and a stop-loss attached. When the entry fills, the take-profit and stop-loss become an OCO pair (one-cancels-other): when one of them fills, the broker cancels the other. For the basics, see bracket and OCO orders explained.
What Signal Trade App Copies
Every follower copies with Market Execution. It is always on and there is no setting for it. Followers copy the leader's fills, not its resting orders: when a leader order fills, each follower gets a market order for that size × its copy ratio. The bracket itself stays on the leader, and its take-profit and stop-loss decide when everyone exits.
| Leader does this | Every follower |
|---|---|
| Places a bracket (entry + TP + SL) | Nothing yet. Resting orders are not copied |
| Entry fills | Enters at market, sized by its copy ratio |
| Moves the take-profit or stop-loss | Nothing. The leader's levels decide when everyone exits |
| Cancels a resting bracket before it fills | Nothing. It never entered |
| TP or SL fills | Exits: Protect closes it in that contract, or with Protect off the leader's exit is copied as a market order |
So a follower never shows its own take-profit and stop-loss in the Cockpit. That is expected. Market orders fill immediately, so every follower stays in step with the leader instead of waiting at a price its broker may never reach. Because followers hold no stop of their own, keep Protect on (below) and keep the leader connected.
Where the Bracket Can Come From
- Your broker platform: place the bracket on the leader account in Tradovate, NinjaTrader or TradingView's trading panel as you normally would.
- The Signal Trade App chart: place the bracket on /chart and drag the lines to move the levels.
- A TradingView alert: add
takeProfitandstopLossprices to the webhook message. See the TradingView to Tradovate setup guide. - The REST API: send
takeProfitandstopLosswith the order. See the API docs.
Partial Exits and Scaling Out
To take part of a position off, the leader places an opposite-side order for that part. Followers copy it at their ratio. For example, a leader long 4 contracts who sells 2 sends a 2-contract sell to a follower at ratio 1 and a 4-contract sell to a follower at ratio 2. Followers are never sized from what they or the leader currently hold.
Protect: an Optional Safety Net
Protect is a per-follower toggle in the Cockpit, on by default for new followers. When the leader goes flat in a contract, the broker closes that follower's position in the same contract and cancels its orders there. This is how a protected follower exits when the leader's take-profit or stop-loss fills, and it also catches a follower that is still holding after the leader has exited, for example one that missed the entry during a reconnect. Turn it off only for a follower you also trade by hand, because it closes whatever that follower holds in the contract.
Best Practices
- Test a one-contract bracket on a demo account first and watch the Cockpit: every follower should enter when the leader's entry fills and go flat when its TP or SL fills.
- Keep followers on the same contract month as the leader. Continuous symbols like
MNQ1!in TradingView resolve to the front month for you. - Do not trade follower accounts by hand while they are following. A manual order on a follower is not part of the leader's bracket.
- If a broker rejects a leg on the leader (for example, a stop on the wrong side of the market), the leader's bracket is incomplete and followers have no exit until the leader does. Check the leader after any rejection notice.
Read next: TradingView to Tradovate setup guide · Risk Management guide.
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