Position management: the rules you set
Once the position you decided on is open, Stancel can apply the management rules you give it: move the stop to breakeven, trail it, close in pieces and cancel what's left over. It doesn't decide any trade: it only carries out yours.
Everything comes off out of the box. Each thing gets switched on by giving it a number, and at zero it does nothing. It's in SETTINGS → Management.
Automatic breakeven
"Automatic breakeven at (x R)"
When the position has earned X times what it risked on opening, the stop moves to the entry. From there, the worst possible exit is a scratch.
With 1.5, breakeven kicks in once you're up one and a half times the risk.
Trailing stop
"Trailing stop in points"
How much room is left between the price and the stop, behind it.
Two things worth knowing, because they're what separate a useful trailing stop from one that gets in the way:
- It doesn't activate until the stop it would propose reaches the entry. If it started earlier, it would be tightening the stop you decided to give, without you asking for it.
- It never moves backwards. The stop only moves in your favour.
Partial closes
Two steps, each with two figures: at what R it triggers and what percentage it closes.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| 1st partial at (x R) | When the first piece closes |
| 1st partial: how much to close (%) | What percentage of the position |
| 2nd partial at (x R) | When the second closes |
| 2nd partial: how much to close (%) | What percentage of what's left |
The second percentage is of what's left, not of the original. By the time the second step arrives, the first has already taken its share. With 50% and 50% you don't close 100%: you close half, and then half of that half.
And three details that prevent surprises:
- A losing position is never split.
- 100% isn't allowed on the first partial: closing the whole thing is a different action and has its own button.
- If the second step is set closer than the first, or equal to it, it's ignored. Both would trigger on the same tick, which isn't stepping in — it's closing more than anyone intended, all at once.
And they don't repeat on restart
Partials are counted from the account's history, not from a note in memory. Restarting the terminal doesn't repeat a partial already taken.
If the broker won't allow that piece
The largest piece it will allow gets closed instead. And if what remained would be smaller than the minimum lot, nothing gets split — because leaving a remainder that can't be managed is worse than not splitting at all.
Cancel the rest on the symbol (OCO)
"When one comes in, cancel the rest on the symbol"
If you planned several alternative entries and one comes in, the other pending orders on that symbol get cancelled.
With two deliberate limits:
- Only yours. Pending orders from another program are never touched.
- Only when the position has just opened. A pending order placed on top of a position that was already there doesn't cancel itself.
Off out of the box, for a specific reason: if what you actually wanted was to scale into the entry in several pieces, this would erase the rest of your plan. The two uses look very alike from outside and are opposites.
What it touches and what it doesn't
All automatic management acts only on Stancel's own positions. What you opened by hand or with another program stays as it is.
The one exception is the safety stop, explained in its section: when it trips, it closes everything, including what isn't yours. This is deliberate — the drawdown belongs to the account, not to our orders.
How to choose the figures
There's no one good answer for everyone, but there is a way to get it wrong less often: switch one thing on at a time.
Breakeven and trailing together from day one make it impossible to tell which of the two is pulling you out too early. With just one on for a week, the answer becomes visible.
And every figure is in R — multiples of your risk — and not in pips, on purpose: that way they keep working when you switch pairs or volatility changes.