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Set your own daily loss lockout on your trading platform
The best time to decide when you stop for the day is before the day starts. Most futures platforms let you set that stop yourself, and some will lock you out when you hit it, even if you change your mind.
Why set your own, when the firm already has one?
The firm’s daily loss limit and drawdown are the most you’re allowed to lose. Your own daily stop should be smaller: the number from your rules, not the firm’s. With a $2,000 drawdown and a $500 daily limit, four bad days end the account. Stop yourself at $400 and it takes five. The drawdown runway calculator works this out on your numbers.
Writing that number down is step one. Having the platform enforce it is step two, because the moment you most want to keep trading is exactly the moment your judgement is worst.
The one thing to check: can you undo it the same day?
Some platforms lock the setting until the next session. Others let you raise the limit or switch it off at any time, which means the lock only works if you never touch it. Both are useful, but they’re not the same thing, so each platform below is marked:
- Locks until the next session: once it’s on, you can’t loosen it today.
- Can be loosened: it works as long as you don’t raise it mid-session.
Platform by platform
From each platform’s own help pages, checked 24 September 2026. Menus change, so open the source link before you rely on the steps.
TopstepX
Locks until the next session (if you use the lock)
Set a Personal Daily Loss Limit under Settings → Risk Settings, and choose what happens when it’s hit: do nothing, liquidate, or liquidate and block for the session. Then press Lock Risk Settings (the Daily Risk Lock) and the settings can’t be changed until they unlock at 5:00 PM CT. There’s also a Personal Lockout that ends your session right away and can’t be cancelled.
Source: Risk settings · Daily Risk Lock · Lockout
ProjectX-based platforms
Locks until the next session (with “Liquidate and Block”)
Several firms run platforms built on ProjectX. Under Risk Settings, a personal daily loss limit with Liquidate and Block closes your positions and blocks trading for the rest of the day, and that can’t be reversed until the next trading day. Plain “Liquidate” closes positions but doesn’t block you.
Source: DayTraders.com help
Volumetrica Web
Locks until the next session (with “Inhibit Changes”)
Account settings include a Daily Loss Limit (in dollars or percent), with a Daily Lockout that closes positions and stops further trading. Turn on Inhibit Changes Until Next Session so you can’t edit the limit once the day has started.
Source: Volumetrica changelog
Quantower
Locks for a set time (with “Lock on Risk Event”)
Control Center → Risk Management (marked beta). Create a template with a Day loss limit, set the action to Flatten, and assign it to your account. Turn on Lock on Risk Event, or you can simply switch the rule off. Note the day loss limit counts realized losses.
Source: Quantower help
Tradovate
Can be loosened
Application Settings → Accounts → Risk Settings, turn on Daily Loss and enter your number. When it’s hit, working orders are cancelled, your position is closed, and you can’t trade that account until the session ends. But you can unlock it by raising the limit or switching it off, so it only works if you leave it alone. Some prop firms don’t allow risk settings on evaluation accounts; check yours.
Source: Tradovate help
NinjaTrader (brokerage accounts)
Can be loosened
The Daily Loss Limit sits in your account’s Risk Settings (in the NinjaTrader Dashboard under Settings → Accounts, or the shield icon in NinjaTrader Web) and applies across desktop, web and mobile. When it’s hit, a market order closes your positions and the account can’t trade for the rest of the session. NinjaTrader staff have said raising or disabling the limit lets you trade again.
Source: NinjaTrader risk tools · NinjaTrader Prop
Rithmic R | Trader Pro
Can be loosened
In the trader dashboard, right-click your account → View Risk Parameters → the tab for parameters set by the trader. Enable Auto Liquidate, set a Loss Limit, and enable Liquidate Only on Auto Liquidate so the account is blocked from new trades after it fires. The values can be changed at any time, and the block has to be reset by hand; it doesn’t clear by itself the next day.
Source: AMP Futures help
TradingView: we couldn’t find a daily loss lock in TradingView’s own documentation. If you trade through TradingView, set the limit at your broker or platform account instead.
Three things that catch people out
- It can overshoot. When the limit is hit, positions are closed with market orders. In a fast market you can lose more than the number you set. Leave a gap below the firm’s limit.
- What it counts differs. Some count open profit and loss and fees, some only closed trades. Read your platform’s wording.
- Copied accounts. A limit on one account doesn’t protect the others on your copier. Set it on each account, or use a setting that covers the copies.
Set it once, in five minutes
- Pick your daily stop from your own rules, below the firm’s daily limit. The free sizing lesson walks through it.
- Set it on your platform, using the steps above and your platform’s help page.
- If your platform has a lock, turn it on. If it doesn’t, write this rule down: I never raise my daily stop during the session.
- Put the same number in the Desk, which checks it before every trade.
Using a platform’s own lockout isn’t a workaround or a trick. It’s the platform doing what it was built for, and it’s the same kind of limit your firm already puts on you. You’re just setting a stricter one for yourself.
Check a trade against your rules
Your daily stop, your contract cap, your wait after a loss. Allowed or not, with the reason.
Track it as you go
The Rules Desk Journal & Workbook is a 500-row trade log that works out your win-rate range, break-even, average result per trade and what rule breaks cost you. $39, instant download.
Educational material only. Not investment advice. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss and most people who try it lose money. Check your account rules with your firm; they change.