Risk guardrails: daily loss and drawdown limits

The two ways a trading account usually dies are one catastrophic day and a slow bleed nobody stopped. Guardrails are the journal's answer to both: you decide the numbers in advance, while you are calm, and the app tells you when you have crossed them.

Setting your limits

Both limits live in Settings → Plan, under your risk profile:

• Max daily loss — the most you are willing to lose in realised P&L in a single trading day.
• Max drawdown — the most you are willing to be down from your account's highest equity point before you stop and reassess.

Leave either at zero to switch it off. Setting a number you would actually respect matters more than setting a clever one.

What happens when you breach one

A fixed banner appears across the top of the app and stays there. It cannot be dismissed — a warning you can click away is a warning you will click away on exactly the day it matters. It clears by itself when the condition that raised it is no longer true, so there is nothing to dismiss in the first place.

The daily-loss check counts realised P&L from trades you closed today, in your own timezone. The drawdown check measures your current unrecovered decline from your equity peak, and folds in the unrealised P&L of any positions still open — a drawdown you are holding rather than one you have booked is still a drawdown.

Guardrail notifications

Each breach also raises an entry in the notification feed behind the bell icon, so it is still there in your history after the banner clears. You can turn guardrail notifications off in Settings → General without turning off the banner itself.

What guardrails do not do

They do not place orders, contact your broker, or lock you out of the app. This is a journal, not a risk desk — it has no connection to your broker and cannot stop you trading. The banner is there to make the number impossible to not notice. Acting on it is yours.