Stopline Trade Manager › Guides

Daily Loss Limit in MetaTrader

By Brendon, a trader for 15 years and the maker of Stopline Trade Manager. Updated 27 October 2026.

A daily loss limit is a line you set before the session: lose this much today, and you stop. The rule is simple to state and easy to break by accident: a loss in the morning, a revenge trade after lunch, a position that is still open when the day's loss is counted.

Decide the Rule First

Three things make up the rule:

• The base: a percentage of the starting balance, of the day's starting balance or equity, or a fixed amount.
• What counts: closed losses only, or closed losses plus open (floating) losses.
• When the day resets: at the server's midnight or at another time.

Where Traders Break It

• Oversizing: a lot worked out by hand, or rounded up, risks more than planned on every trade.
• One more trade: after a loss, the next entry is taken to win it back.
• Open losses: the closed result looks fine, but a floating loss takes the day over the limit.
• Stacking: several positions on one symbol add up to far more risk than any single trade.

Guards That Help You Stay Inside It

Stopline Trade Manager has these risk guards. Each one holds you to a limit you set before the session.

Guard	What it does
Daily loss limit	Counts today's closed result plus the floating result of the positions it manages. At your limit, an amount or a percentage of the balance, it blocks new entries until the next server day. It closes nothing.
Maximum open trades	Refuses a new entry above your limit.
Exposure per symbol	Refuses an order that would take the symbol's lots above your limit.
Lot limit	Keeps the lot inside your minimum and maximum and says when it applies.
Spread limit	Holds entries while the spread is wider than your limit.
Funds check	Refuses an order the account's funds cannot carry, before the broker does.

A health dot in the panel's header turns orange at the daily limit, and the risk can use the balance at the start of the previous day, week or month as its base, so the limit can measure from a fixed point.

Size Every Trade from Risk

The guard is the last line. The first is sizing each trade so that a stopped-out trade costs a small, known share of the daily limit: see how position size is calculated. With a daily limit of 5 % and a risk of 0.5 % per trade, it takes ten full losses in one day to reach it.

Get the Guards

Both editions have the daily loss limit, maximum open trades, exposure per symbol and the spread limit, on MetaTrader 5 and MetaTrader 4. The guards and the sizing alone: EZ. The same plus exits that run by rules and a scheduled close from the trade time manager: Stopline Trade Manager, which you can also rent for a month to try it on your own charts.

Watch it in the video manual: Stopline Trade Manager EZ at 29:23 or Stopline Trade Manager at 52:28.