The reason a copier's settings are split across two levels is a specific failure. A trader follows a careful swing channel and an aggressive intraday one. A single global risk setting means either the swing trades are too small to matter or the intraday ones are too big to survive. So sizing and trade handling belong to the channel, and the hard limits belong to the account.
What belongs to the channel
Sizing, targets, break-even and trailing are configured per channel, because they are opinions about that provider. A channel posting 90 pip stops on gold and one posting 12 pip stops on EURUSD need different treatment even if you trust both equally. What each of those settings does mechanically, and how to choose between fixed lots, risk percentage and a multiplier, is covered in detail in the settings guide, and that is the article to read before this one.
The per-channel arrangement has a second use. It lets you demote a channel without leaving it. A provider you are unsure about can be set to a quarter of the risk you give your main one, or to targets only with no trailing, and you keep collecting evidence at a size that does not matter.
What belongs to the account
The cap on open positions is the account's, not the channel's, and that is the entire point. Three channels reacting to the same release produce three correlated longs, each of them individually within its own channel's rules. The cap is the only setting that sees all of them. Set it at a number you would be comfortable holding through a bad five minutes, then subtract one.
The spread limit is also account-level in effect, because spread is a property of your broker and your account type rather than of the channel that posted. Set it against the instrument's ordinary spread on your own account. The window around a scheduled release is when this earns its keep, and the mechanics of why spreads move then are in spread widening.
Both guards refuse trades, and a refusal is recorded with its reason. Reviewing those refusals at the end of a month is more useful than reviewing the fills: it tells you whether your guards are protecting you or quietly excluding you from an entire class of setups.
Running several accounts at once
Settings are per account as well as per channel, which is what makes a demo comparison honest. Connect a demo with identical channel rules and identical guards, and any divergence at the end of the month is execution rather than configuration. Change one setting on the demo and it becomes a controlled test instead.
Where accounts have very different balances, the sizing rule is what carries the difference, not a separate set of channel rules. Risk percentage on a 1,000 unit account and on a 20,000 unit account produces proportional positions from the same instruction, which is the whole argument in scaling lots between accounts.
The order to configure things in
Sizing first, because it decides the magnitude of everything else and it is the setting people get wrong. Then the guards, because they are one number each and they prevent the two most expensive accidents. Then target handling, because it is the setting most tied to what the provider assumes you are doing. Then break-even and trailing last, since both are refinements that can be added after you have watched the channel behave for a few weeks.
Change one thing at a time after that. A month where you adjusted sizing, targets and the trail together tells you nothing about which change mattered, and there are not enough trades in a month to separate three variables anyway. This is the same discipline that applies to testing any rule set.
Two configurations worth copying
A cautious first month on an unfamiliar channel: risk percentage at half a per cent, split targets, break-even after the first target, trailing off, a spread limit at roughly double the instrument's ordinary spread on your account, and a cap of three open positions. Small enough that being wrong about the channel is an inconvenience.
A settled channel you have watched for six months: the risk figure you actually use, target handling matched to how the provider publishes their own results, break-even set after the first or second target depending on whether you want the runner to survive, and the same two guards, because those never stop being worth their single number each.
What the settings cannot do
They cannot make a bad channel profitable. They cannot compensate for a provider who posts late, deletes and reposts, or publishes screenshots with no parsable text. They cannot size a signal that arrives without a stop when your rule is risk percentage, and the fallback size you configure for that case deserves more thought than it usually gets, because an unstopped position is the largest risk on the account by definition.
And they do not constitute a risk framework. A copier enforces the rules you gave it on the trades that arrive. What proportion of your capital is exposed at all, and what happens after a losing run, are decisions that sit above any software, discussed in risk management rules. Current product detail is on copysignals.io.
Leveraged trading carries a high risk of loss. These settings describe what software does, not what you should trade.
"Per channel settings exist so you never have to choose between following a careful provider properly and following an aggressive one safely. The account cap exists because neither of them knows the other is trading."
— Alex Onta, Executive Director, SINGUARD
Key Takeaways
- Sizing, targets, break-even and trailing are set per channel, because they are opinions about a specific provider's style.
- The open-position cap and the spread limit belong to the account, since they are the only settings that see every channel at once.
- Reviewing refused trades and their recorded reasons says more about your configuration than reviewing the fills does.
- Configure sizing first, then the guards, then target handling, then break-even and trailing, and change one thing at a time afterwards.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can two channels have different risk on the same account?
Yes, and that is the normal setup. Sizing and trade handling are configured per channel, while the open-position cap and spread limit apply to the account as a whole.
Does the position cap count trades from every channel?
Yes. It is applied at the account level precisely so that several channels firing on the same news cannot stack correlated positions past the number you set.
What should I set on a channel I have just found?
Something small enough that a bad month is uninteresting, with the guards on and no trailing, then leave it alone for several weeks. The point of the first month is evidence, not return.
About the Author
Alex Onta is an Executive Director at SINGUARD. He built eTrader, the terminal, the mobile apps, eTrader Broker, Copytrading, Business and Community, along with the worldwide clustered-server infrastructure it all runs on, with his brother Roman Onta helping on the design, and he leads that division today. Together with Roman he builds the Prop Firm CRM, the Broker CRM, Scalegram and CopySignals, and the two of them carry worldwide compliance, payment processing and international business structuring side by side. He lives and works in Dubai for most of the year. Meet the executive duo leading Singuard's five divisions.