TRADE MANAGER

Trade Manager is an all-in-one trading panel for Sierra Chart that consolidates position sizing, order entry, position reduction, and directional filtering into a single, fully configurable study. Designed for active traders who need speed, precision, and risk control without switching between multiple tools.

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Seamless Trading Journal Integration

Trade Manager works hand-in-hand with the Trading Journal. When you enter a position with Trade Manager, the stop loss level you drew on the chart is automatically passed to the Trading Journal, which means your R-values are computed and recorded automatically, without ever entering anything manually. Every trade ends up in your journal with its exact risk reference, MFE, MAE, and tick-level P&L curve, ready for analysis.

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Automatic Position Sizing

Trade Manager calculates your order quantity automatically to fit the risk amount you define, with no manual math required. The quantity is rounded down to whole contracts, so a trade usually risks slightly less than your amount; if even one contract would exceed it, you can either place that single contract or have the order blocked entirely (see Commission-Aware Risk Sizing below).

Two risk modes available:

• Percent mode: risk is expressed as a percentage of your account balance. On live accounts, the balance is fetched automatically from Sierra Chart. On simulation accounts, you set it manually via the Account Balance input.
• Fixed $ mode: risk is a fixed dollar amount, regardless of account size.

Real-time risk adjustment: Two dedicated ACS buttons (Risk Up / Risk Down) let you increase or decrease your risk level instantly, directly from your chart. The step size is configurable independently for each mode (e.g. 0.25% per click in percent mode, $100 per click in fixed mode). The current risk value is always displayed as a text label directly on the chart.

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One-Click Order Entry: 6 Order Types

Draw a horizontal line on the chart to define your stop loss level, then click any of the 6 order buttons. The quantity is automatically calculated based on the distance between your entry and the stop line.

Button	Order type	Entry price
Buy Stop	Stop order	Cursor position
Buy Limit	Limit order	Cursor position
Sell Stop	Stop order	Cursor position
Sell Limit	Limit order	Cursor position
Buy Market	Market order	Last price
Sell Market	Market order	Last price

• Stop loss is automatically attached at the drawn line level.
• Take profit is attached automatically using the TP mode you choose (see below).
• Orders are routed to live trade service or simulation automatically based on account type.

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Take Profit Modes

Take profit placement is fully configurable through a single Mode selector, so the same panel fits any target style:

• R Ratio (default): TP at a multiple of the stop distance (default 5R, adjustable 0.5R to 50R)
• Points: TP a fixed number of points from entry
• Ticks: TP a fixed number of ticks from entry
• Fixed $: TP at a target dollar profit on the filled quantity
• % of Balance: TP at a target percentage of account balance

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Commission-Aware Risk Sizing

When Include Commission in Risk is enabled, the round-trip commission per contract is added to the per-contract risk denominator, so the worst-case loss including commission stays within the risk amount you configured. The round-trip commission per contract is set in a dedicated input (for example, NQ at IBKR is roughly $4.50 round-trip per contract).

Block Order If 1 Contract Exceeds Risk: when enabled, the order is rejected entirely if even a single contract would risk more than your configured amount, instead of silently placing that one contract. The risk comparison includes commission when commission-aware sizing is on. Off by default, so existing behavior is preserved unless you opt in.

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Directional Filter

An optional toggle button cycles through three states:

• X: all order entry blocked (full lock)
• LONG only: only buy orders are allowed
• SHORT only: only sell orders are allowed

The current state is displayed as a text label on the chart. This feature can be enabled or disabled entirely via the study settings.

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Half Size: Close Half at Market

One button sends a market order to close exactly half of your current open position, whether long or short. Rounding mode is configurable:

• Floor (default): rounds down (conservative, closes the smaller half)
• Ceil: rounds up (closes the larger half)

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Half Orders: Close Half via Limit or Stop

Places a passive order to close half your position at the cursor price. The order type is determined automatically:

Position	Cursor vs last price	Order placed
Long	Above last price	Limit sell at cursor
Long	Below last price	Stop sell at cursor
Short	Below last price	Limit buy at cursor
Short	Above last price	Stop buy at cursor

Same rounding mode (Floor / Ceil) applies as Half Size.

Reducing attached orders: Half Size and Half Orders send a normal reducing trade. To have Sierra Chart adjust your attached Stop Loss and Take Profit to the remaining size, enable Scale Out in Sierra Chart (Global Settings > General Trade Settings). This is a one-time Sierra Chart setting. Note: for a limit scale-out, Sierra Chart can leave the limit working if the position is stopped before it fills; use multiple attached targets when you need that managed natively.

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Break-Even Automation

Trade Manager can move the Stop Loss attached to your position to break-even, three ways (all on a single Trade Manager bracket, no scale-in):

• Auto Break-Even: opt-in (off by default), trigger-based. Choose a trigger mode (R Ratio, Points, Ticks, Fixed $, or % of Balance) and an Auto BE Offset (ticks past entry). Once the favorable excursion reaches the trigger, the attached stop moves to break-even once per trade.
• Move to BE Now: an ACS action (keyboard shortcut or visible button) that moves the stop to break-even instantly.
• Arm BE at Price: arm a price level (at the cursor, or click-to-arm depending on Cursor Action Mode), and the stop moves to break-even when price reaches it.

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Cursor Action Mode

Every cursor-priced action (Arm BE at Price, Buy/Sell Limit, Buy/Sell Stop, Half Orders, Horizontal Line at Cursor) follows a single Cursor Action Mode selector:

• At cursor on button press (default): the action uses the price under your mouse the instant it fires. Best with keyboard shortcuts, since your mouse stays on the chart.
• Click on chart after pressing button: the action waits for your next chart click to set the price. Made for visible Control Bar buttons, because clicking a toolbar button moves the mouse off the chart, so there is no live cursor price at press time.

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Horizontal Line Tools

Horizontal Line at Cursor drops a standard horizontal line at the cursor price in one step, no Tools menu needed. The line is a normal user-drawn drawing: draggable, deletable, it stacks (each press adds a new one), and it can serve immediately as your Trade Manager stop line. It honors Cursor Action Mode, and its color and width are configurable.

Two companion actions clean up instantly (no chart click needed):

• Delete Last Horizontal Line: removes the most recent line dropped by Trade Manager
• Delete All Horizontal Lines: removes all of them at once

Only lines dropped via Horizontal Line at Cursor are tracked and removed; your manually drawn lines are never touched.

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Safety Layer

A dedicated Safety section hard-bounds what a single click, a runaway loop, or a misbehaving physical button can do:

• Allow LIVE Entries: kill switch; set to No to hard-disable live entries while Sim entries keep working
• Max Total Position: rejects any entry whose projected position would exceed the cap
• Min Entry Spacing: minimum interval between two accepted entries
• Max Entries Per Window: caps accepted entries per rolling time window
• Max Order Quantity: hard ceiling on a single order quantity, always active
• Min Stop Distance: rejects an entry whose stop line is drawn too close to the entry price
• Order Button Debounce Cooldown: optional per-button cooldown for flickering hardware

On top of these, an anti-storm latch guarantees each ACS button fires exactly once per genuine press, and a collision detector warns in the message log if two actions share the same ACS button number.

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Configuration

The Settings dialog is organized into clearly labeled sections (General, Risk Sizing, Take Profit, Order Behavior, Display, ACS Buttons, Diagnostics, Auto Break-Even, Safety, Cursor Action, Line Deletion) so every input is easy to find. Sync Mode lets multiple Trade Managers share live trading state across charts (risk %, fixed risk, account balance, and block direction; the Take Profit stays per-chart): click Risk Up on any synced chart and they all update at once, or turn it off to give a chart its own independent state.

All 16 ACS button assignments are individually configurable: enter the real Sierra Chart ACS button number for each action directly in the study settings. Each action maps to a Sierra Chart Custom Study Control Bar Button number, and the recommended setup is to bind those numbers to keyboard shortcuts, so you trigger every action without moving the mouse to the Chart Shortcut Bar (showing the buttons on the bar is optional). Many other settings, such as text label positions (X/Y), chart region, font size, and risk step sizes, are adjustable without editing code.

Default ACS button layout:

ACS #	Action
1	Buy Stop
2	Buy Limit
3	Sell Stop
4	Sell Limit
5	Buy Market
6	Sell Market
7	Half Size (market)
8	Half Orders (limit/stop)
9	Risk Down
10	Risk Up
11	Direction Toggle
24	Move to BE Now
25	Arm BE at Price
26	Horizontal Line at Cursor
27	Delete Last Horizontal Line
28	Delete All Horizontal Lines

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Requirements

• Sierra Chart with ACSIL custom study support
• Auto Trading Enabled - Global must be turned ON in the Sierra Chart trading window. Without it, the order buttons will not place trades. (Trade > Auto Trading Enabled - Global)
• A horizontal line drawn on the chart (using Sierra Chart's built-in drawing tool) before placing orders; this line defines the stop loss level
• Keyboard shortcuts (recommended) or visible Chart Shortcut Bar buttons, configured in Global Settings, to trigger the actions
• Sierra Chart Scale Out enabled (Global Settings > General Trade Settings) when using Half Size or Half Orders with attached Stop and Target orders
• Compatible with both live and simulation accounts