Risk Management Guide: DLL, DPT, Lockouts, and Max Quantity

Category: App Pages | Last updated: 2026-06-15 | Reading time: 7 min read

Risk management controls showing daily loss limit, profit target, and auto-lockout settings.

Why Risk Management Matters

The Signal Trade App risk management page showing per-account session lockouts and manual lockout controls — Risk Management: set per-account session lockouts and manual lockouts to protect every account.

Prop firm traders live and die by daily loss limits. One bad trade copied across ten accounts can wipe out weeks of progress. Signal Trade App's risk layer stops copying automatically when limits are hit, protecting every follower account.

Risk Controls Overview

Diagram showing a personal daily stop set above the firm daily loss limit with a safety buffer — Set your personal daily stop above the firm limit — the copier auto-locks accounts before a breach.

Control	What It Does	Where to Set It
Daily Loss Limit (DLL)	Stops copying after a dollar loss threshold.	Copy group settings or per-account.
Daily Profit Target (DPT)	Stops copying after a profit target is reached.	Copy group settings.
Max Quantity	Caps the number of contracts per trade.	Per follower in a group.
Auto-Lockout	Disables a group or account after a limit is hit.	Risk settings.
Trailing Drawdown	Tracks peak-to-trough loss and locks out at the threshold.	Account or group level.

How DLL Works

When the total unrealized or realized loss for a group reaches the DLL, Signal Trade App stops sending new copy orders. Existing positions are not flattened automatically unless you enable that option. You can manually close positions from the Cockpit or your broker platform.

How DPT Works

DPT locks the group once the daily profit target is reached. This prevents overtrading and helps you lock in gains on days where the market is moving in your favor.

Setting Up Risk on a New Group

Open the Cockpit and create or edit a group.
Set the group-level DLL to a number you can afford to lose across all followers.
Set a per-account DLL for each follower if accounts have different rules.
Set max quantity per follower based on account size and prop firm limits.
Enable auto-lockout and choose whether to flatten open positions.
Save the group and verify the risk badges appear on the Cockpit card.

Recommended Starting Values

These are conservative defaults for new traders. Adjust based on your strategy and prop firm rules.

Account Size	DLL	Max Quantity	DPT
$50K eval	$500	2 contracts	$1,000
$100K eval	$1,000	3 contracts	$2,000
$150K funded	$1,500	5 contracts	$3,000

What Happens When a Limit Is Hit?

The group status changes to LOCKED or PAUSED.
You receive a WebSocket notification and an optional email alert.
No new copy orders are sent until you manually unlock the group.
Open positions remain open unless flatten-on-lockout is enabled.

Best Practices

Set DLL lower than the prop firm trailing drawdown to leave a safety buffer.
Use per-account DLLs when followers have different account sizes.
Review DLL hits in the Journal to find strategy weaknesses.
Never disable auto-lockout on funded accounts.

Start Copy Trading Free

Signal Trade App lets you copy one trade across unlimited futures accounts in under 500ms. Sign up free with a 5-day Pro trial (credit card required, no charge during trial).