# Trade Management

Trade Management options control **how individual trades are opened, managed, and closed**. Think of this group as your “per-trade ruleset”: how much profit you want, how much loss you’re willing to accept, and what the EA should do **immediately after a bad exit** (pause/cooldown)

These settings are especially useful if you:

* want **clear, consistent exit rules** (TP/SL) rather than only internal logic,
* trade on **funded/proprietary accounts** with execution restrictions,
* need **extra protection** against rapid re-entries after a loss.

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### What these options control

#### 1) Profit exits (TP)

* **Take Profit (TP) in points** lets you set a fixed TP distance for the entry trade. If disabled (`0`), the EA closes trades based on its internal profit logic. Execution can be broker-side (Classic) or EA-internal (Virtual), depending on your TP/SL/Trailing type.
* Important interaction: to let TP be reached, you typically need “Wait for Better Profit” enabled (or make sure other profit rules don’t close earlier).

#### 2) Loss exits (SL)

* **Stop Loss (SL) in points** sets a fixed SL distance for the entry trade. If disabled (`0`), the EA won’t close the entry trade by a fixed SL and can rely on recovery/hard-stop style logic instead.

#### 3) Per-trade risk cap (drawdown-based)

* **Max Drawdown per Trade** closes a trade if its loss reaches a chosen **% of balance**.
* **Lock Max Drawdown per Trade to Initial Equity** makes that drawdown limit **fixed from the moment the trade opens**, so the threshold doesn’t shift later due to other trades changing equity.

#### 4) Cooldowns after a loss (automatic pause)

These options prevent the EA from jumping right back into the market after a hard hit:

* **Minutes to Pause After Stop Loss Hit** pauses new entries for a set time after an SL is hit (you can manually resume from the panel).
* **Minutes to Pause after Max DD/Trade Hit** does the same after a trade is closed by the Max DD/Trade rule.

#### 5) Execution “hygiene” (broker / prop account compatibility)

* **Min Trade Hold Time** forces trades to stay open for a minimum number of minutes (useful for brokers that require a minimum hold time, and to avoid ultra-fast closes).
* **Max trade delay** adds a small randomized execution delay (helpful when accounts/brokers dislike trades opening at the exact same millisecond).
  {% endhint %}

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### How to approach these settings

* Start simple: only enable the rules you **actually need** (e.g., prop rules, strict per-trade risk caps, or specific TP behavior).
* If you use Recovery-style management, be careful with tight SL / aggressive per-trade cutoffs, because they can conflict with “let it recover” behavior.
  {% endhint %}

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[Take Profit (TP) in points](/smartchoise-manual/options/trade-management/take-profit-tp-in-points.md)
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[Minutes to Pause After Stop Loss Hit](/smartchoise-manual/options/trade-management/minutes-to-pause-after-stop-loss-hit.md)
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[Lock Max Drawdown per Trade to Initial Equity](/smartchoise-manual/options/trade-management/lock-max-drawdown-per-trade-to-initial-equity.md)
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[Min Trade Hold Time](/smartchoise-manual/options/trade-management/min-trade-hold-time.md)
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[Stop Loss (SL) in points](/smartchoise-manual/options/trade-management/stop-loss-sl-in-points.md)
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[Max Drawdown per Trade](/smartchoise-manual/options/trade-management/max-drawdown-per-trade.md)
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[Minutes to Pause after Max DD/Trade Hit](/smartchoise-manual/options/trade-management/minutes-to-pause-after-max-dd-trade-hit.md)
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[Max trade delay](/smartchoise-manual/options/trade-management/max-trade-delay.md)
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