Trading Risks

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If you use auto trading you must be aware of risks associated with this type of trading in general. The following risks are related to MultiCharts trading features.


OCO-Orders Risk

One Cancels Other (OCO) orders are the price orders sent in a group. When any of OCO orders is filled or partially filled, the system cancels or reduces size of other orders in this OCO-group.

Note: Reduce size functionality is supported by Interactive Brokers only: if one order in OCO group is partially filled, others are reduced in size proportionally.

All Entry Strategies are placed with OCO-orders.

There are two types of OCO-groups in MultiCharts: Native and Simulated.

Native OCO-group is used when the broker’s API supports OCO-groups. In this case all OCO orders are sent to the broker directly and unfilled OCO orders will be cancelled by the broker. (Native OCO-group is supported by CQG, Rithmic (RAPI+ only), Interactive Brokers and IWBank).

Simulated OCO-group means that all OCO orders will be sent to the broker, but once one of them is filled, other orders from this OCO group will be cancelled by MultiCharts. In this case, when one of the OCO orders is filled, MultiCharts will send a command to cancel or reduce size of the second OCO order to the broker.

Please note that in case of high market volatility there may be not enough time to cancel the order and therefore both orders may be filled. Both orders also may be filled in the unlikely event of crash or connection loss.

In-Progress Orders

In-Progress Orders are the orders that are submitted but not filled yet or partially filled. If you activate Close Position' or Flatten Everything feature in Open Positions and Orders tabs of the Order and Position Tracker while there are pending in-progress orders, it may happen that one of the in-progress orders is filled before the cancellation request arrives at broker. So the position will increase compared to the moment Close Position or Flatten Everything feature was activated. The market orders that are created to close the position will not close the current position. As a result you will still have an open position at broker.

Example: You have a long position at broker with quantity 3. There are two orders (+1 each) in progress. You activate Close Position or Flatten Everything feature in Open Positions and Orders tabs of the Order and Position Tracker. One in-progress order is cancelled. Another one is filled before the cancellation request arrives at broker. The position at broker becomes “+4”. “-3” market order is sent in order to close your position because this amount was valid at the moment of activating Close Position or Flatten Everything feature. As a result there is an open position +1 at broker.


Generally, this is a rare situation. When you activate the Close Position or the Flatten Everything feature please check Open Positions and Orders tabs of the Order and Position Tracker in order to ensure that all orders were cancelled and positions flattened. To avoid such situations we recommend you to be accurate when using the "Close Position" option especially when you have orders that are working within a few ticks of the inside market.


Simulated Stop Orders

Such brokers as GAIN Capital and Rithmic reject stop orders that are obviously executable at the moment when they are received. For example, if the market price of the instrument is 10 and you send a stop order with condition to buy at 9 or worse, then this order will be rejected by these brokers. MultiCharts converts such orders to market ones. So the stop order with condition to buy at 9 or worse can be executed at the price of 10.


In this case you should be aware that if the price goes down for example to 8 at the moment when MultiCharts sends market order, the order will be filled at 8 and not at 9 or worse.