Enable trade locking

The Enable trade locking option makes TradersPost run at most one trade at a time for the same broker account and symbol. While another trade for that account and symbol is still submitting orders, a new trade does not plan or submit yet.

That hold ends when TradersPost is done with the other trade on our side. It does not wait for the broker to fill the order or for the position to settle. The broker may still be working or filling the order when the next trade is allowed to start.

Why Use This Option?

When two signals for the same account and symbol arrive close together with locking off, both trades can plan from the same open-position snapshot before either has submitted orders. That can produce overlapping decisions, for example:

• the same entry taken twice;
• two exits that each try to close the full position and leave you short.

With locking on, the second trade is held back until the first has finished submitting, so it plans after that submission work is done. It may still see a broker position that has not caught up to fills yet — locking only serializes TradersPost, not the broker.

Leave this off unless your strategy often sends overlapping signals for the same symbol and you need that serialization. New strategies start with it off.

How It Works

• Enabled: if another trade already holds the lock for the same broker account and symbol, this trade does not sit and block the worker. TradersPost puts it back on the queue and tries again after a short delay. Those delays grow with each attempt and then cap, and the trade keeps retrying until the lock is free. This wait is not controlled by the Retries settings in this section (those apply when a trade fails to plan).
• Disabled: trades run as soon as they arrive, without waiting on each other for a lock.

The lock belongs to the broker account and symbol, not to this strategy or subscription. Your trades also wait behind any other strategy or subscription trading the same symbol on the same account with locking on. Anything with locking off neither waits nor makes others wait.

Paper and live lock separately, so a paper trade never waits for a live one.

Interactive Brokers

Trade locking cannot be disabled on a subscription connected to Interactive Brokers. Interactive Brokers accepts only one order at a time per user, so its trades always run one at a time, across every symbol on that account.

Things to Know

• Strategies and subscriptions created before this setting existed keep locking on.
• New strategies start with it off.
• A new subscription takes its strategy's setting when the strategy applies its default settings to new subscriptions. Otherwise it starts with locking on.
• Changing a strategy's setting never changes its existing subscriptions. Only an edit on the subscription itself does.
• A copy of a strategy keeps the setting of the strategy it was copied from.