If you're new — or if you've just had a rough week and want to dial things back for a bit — here's the calm, conservative way to set up the portal.

Tip

The single safest way to start is to switch your broker to Paper and rehearse with simulated money first — see the Paper Trading topic. Every step below works exactly the same in paper mode, so you can dial in your setup with zero risk before going live.

Step 1: Load a Conservative preset

On the Trading Settings (or Strategies) page, the Quick Start area includes a Conservative preset. Click it. This loads a known-safe set of values for every tab at once: a modest profit target, a tight stop-loss, a tight trading-hours window, and sensible trade limits. You won't have to guess what numbers to use.

Step 2: Cap the day with a loss killswitch

Set a daily loss killswitch at an amount you'd genuinely be okay losing — say, 1% of your account, or a flat dollar figure you can shrug off. Once today hits that number, no more new trades open. This single setting prevents 95% of "bad day" stories.

Step 3: Limit how many trades open at once

Set Max Open Trades to a small number — even 1 is fine to start. One trade at a time forces you to watch each one closely and means you can never accumulate a pile of bad positions before you notice.

Step 4: Use the Conservative alert sources only

If you're using the multi-strategy setup, point your one active strategy at the alert source you trust most. Subscribe to others later as you get comfortable.

Step 5: Lock the settings

Once you've configured everything, use Settings Lock to freeze the configuration for the trading session. This protects you from the most dangerous trader on Earth — your future self mid-drawdown wanting to widen the stop-loss.

Step 6: Watch a full day before changing anything

Resist the urge to tweak. Sit through a full session. At the end of the day, open History and the Calendar, look at every trade, and then decide whether any of your numbers need adjusting.

Tip

"Safe" doesn't mean "stationary." A safe setup that you check daily and refine weekly grows into a good setup. A safe setup you ignore for six months goes stale.