When you are recording a trade you are about to take — or have just taken — the entry form shows a Risk check panel on the order ticket. It runs the numbers the app already holds against the limits you set on the account, and shows the arithmetic.
It never stops you saving anything. A journal that refuses to record what actually happened is not a journal. Nothing here is a recommendation to take or skip a trade either — every line is either your own rule, or a plain figure with no rule attached.
What it checks
Two lines can appear in amber. Both are comparisons against a limit you configured yourself in Settings → Accounts:
- Risk versus your per-trade limit. Entry-to-stop distance × size (× the contract multiplier for futures and options), as a percentage of the account. Compared to the account's risk per trade setting.
- Your daily loss limit. If the account has one and today's realized losses have already reached it — or this trade's risk would carry the day past it — the panel says so. If you asked for an early warning (Warn at % on the account), it also says when today's loss has passed that share of the limit.
The rest are plain figures, shown in grey, with no threshold attached:
- No stop recorded. Not a judgement — a statement that nothing else can be measured. Without a stop there is no unit of risk, so this trade is also missing from every R figure in your analytics and from MFE / MAE.
- Total open risk. The sum of entry-to-stop risk across every open position with a stop, including this one. Open positions without a stop can't be counted, and the panel tells you how many that is.
- Concentration. How much of your total open risk would sit in this one symbol, when you already have risk on it.
We deliberately do not warn on total open risk or concentration. There is no "correct" number for either, and picking one for you would be advice rather than record-keeping. The figure is there; the judgement is yours.
When it appears
- Only for a trade that is Planning or Open.
- Only when the trade is being recorded now. A closed trade, a trade with an exit price, or one whose entry date is in the past is skipped — most journals are written up after the fact, and a warning about a trade you took three weeks ago is noise.
- Only when it has something to say. An empty form shows nothing rather than an empty panel.
Getting more out of it
- Set your risk per trade and daily loss limit on the account — without them the panel can only report figures, never check them against anything.
- Record a stop on every trade. It is the single field that unlocks the most across the whole app: this panel, R-multiples, MFE/MAE and the risk analytics all need it.
- The figures use the same helpers as everything else in the app, so a futures trade is measured at its real contract value rather than per point. See Metrics glossary.