Two words on the platform sound alike and are often confused: the stop-loss a master places on a trade, and the Auto Stop Drawdown you set on a copy. They protect against different things, they are controlled by different people, and getting the second one right is the most important thing a copier does after choosing a master.
The stop-loss: the master's tool, per trade
A stop-loss is an order attached to a single trade: if the price reaches this level, close the position. The master places it when they open the trade — or should. It defines the maximum loss on that trade, and combined with position size it is how the 1% rule is enforced.
When your copy mirrors the master's trade, it mirrors the stop too. If the master's EUR/USD buy has a stop 30 pips below entry, your mirrored buy has the same stop, sized to your allocation. You do not set it; you cannot move it; it is the master's decision and the master's discipline. What you can see is the result: in Recent Trades, a master who uses stops consistently shows losing trades of similar size. A master who does not shows the occasional loss several times larger than the rest — the trade that "got away".
The auto-stop: your tool, per copy
The Auto Stop Drawdown % in the copy form is a different instrument. It watches the equity of your entire copy — the sum of your allocation and all open and closed results — and if that equity falls by the percentage you set, the platform closes every open trade in the copy and stops it. It is yours: you set it, you can change it, and the master has no say in it.
It answers a different question. The stop-loss says "how much can one trade lose?" The auto-stop says "how much can this master lose me before I stop listening?" It is protection against the master being wrong many times in a row, or against a strategy that has stopped working, or against a master who abandons their own stop discipline.
What neither can do
Both are executed at market prices. In a fast market — a data spike, a weekend gap in forex or gold, a liquidation cascade in crypto — the price can jump through the level, and the close happens at the next available price, which can be worse. A stop at 1.0800 can fill at 1.0785; an auto-stop at 20% can close at 22%. Neither is a guarantee of a precise number; both are a guarantee that the loss will be limited to roughly that number rather than open-ended. In normal conditions they fill at or near their levels.
Setting the auto-stop
The mistake most new copiers make is setting it too tight, because a low number feels safe. It is not; it converts the master's ordinary drawdowns into your realised losses. The method:
- Look at the master's Max drawdown. This is the worst fall their own account has taken. Your copy would have taken the same percentage.
- Add a margin. A repeat could be somewhat worse. Add a third to a half: an 18% history becomes an auto-stop of 25–27%.
- Check the amount. Multiply the auto-stop by your Investment. If 25% of $4,000 — $1,000 — is more than you can lose without distress, reduce the Investment, not the auto-stop.
- Set it and leave it. Do not lower it after a bad week ("to be safe") — that is the moment it is most likely to trigger at the bottom. Do not raise it after a bad week ("to give it room") — that is the moment the strategy may genuinely be broken.
Instrument-specific ranges
| Master's instrument | Typical auto-stop range | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Major forex pairs | 10–20% | Low daily volatility; drawdowns come from streaks, not spikes |
| Gold, silver | 15–25% | Daily ranges twice forex's; data days move 2% |
| Bitcoin, crypto | 20–35% | 3% average days; 10% weeks are ordinary |
These are starting points, adjusted by the master's own history. A gold master with a 9% Max drawdown can carry a tighter auto-stop than the table suggests; a forex master with a 30% history needs a wider one — or a second look.
What happens when it triggers
When the auto-stop fires, the platform closes every open mirrored trade in that copy at the current market price, marks the copy stopped, and returns the remaining allocation to your Copy Wallet. Any unsettled profit from earlier in the period is settled with the master in the normal way. You receive a notification. The copy does not restart itself; if you want to follow the same master again, you start a new copy with a fresh allocation and a fresh auto-stop. That pause is deliberate — it puts a decision between the loss and the next allocation, which is exactly where a decision belongs.
The other two limits
The copy form also offers a Daily Loss Limit and a Max Loss Limit in dollars. They do the same job as the auto-stop in absolute terms rather than percentages: the copy stops if it loses more than this amount today, or in total. They suit copiers who think in dollars ("I will not lose more than $500 on this") and they stack with the auto-stop — whichever triggers first, triggers. Leave them empty if the percentage is enough; set them if a dollar figure is what you can actually feel.
The stop-loss is the master's, per trade; the auto-stop is yours, per copy. Set yours above the master's worst history, size the allocation to match, and then leave it alone.
This article is education, not investment advice. Trading and copy trading in leveraged instruments carry a high risk of losing the funds you allocate. Read the Risk Disclosure.