Guards were built for prop firm rules, but nothing about them needs a firm. If you trade your own money, the same machinery will watch the limits you set for yourself, and a limit you wrote down and get warned about is a different thing from one you only meant to keep.
Setting them up
- Open Guards and choose My firm is not listed, or I trade my own account.
- Enter the Account size (the balance the account started with), its Currency, and the Daily reset time, which is when your trading day resets. If you have no reason to pick otherwise, midnight on the broker's server clock is the normal answer.
- Tick the rules you want watched. Four are ticked already: a daily loss limit, a maximum loss, a stop on every trade and a cap on risk per trade, because those are the four that catch people first. Use Search rules to find others.
- Press Save my rules. You will be asked to confirm you have read the short text: FxMind warns and does not guarantee anything.
What you can pick from
Everything FxMind can watch without a firm's numbers: dozens of rules, grouped by what they are about:
- Loss limits
- Daily loss, maximum loss, open loss cap, loss over a week or month
- Stops and risk
- A stop on every trade, risk per trade, risk-to-reward, stops moved away
- Trade size
- Maximum lots per trade, open lots, open positions, pending orders
- Exposure
- Leverage, margin used, exposure to one currency, correlated positions
- Trading habits
- Averaging down, martingale, grid patterns, revenge trading, hedging
- Holding and hours
- Weekend holding, overnight holding, flat by a time, trading hours
- News
- Warnings before a release hits an open trade
Prop firm rules (payout buffers, scaling plans, minimum trading days, consistency targets) are not in this list. They need your firm's own numbers to mean anything, which is what a firm preset carries. Pick your firm instead if you want those: set your prop firm rules.
Changing them later
- Open Guards and press Change rules.
- Open a rule and press Edit to change its numbers. Change Warn me at if you want the warnings earlier or later than 70% and 90%.
- Turn a rule Off without deleting it, or press Delete to remove it.
- Press Add a rule to put in anything you left out. Good first rules shows the usual ones.
Every rule stays yours. Nothing is locked after you save. The same is true if you started from a firm preset: the preset is copied into your rule set and then it is yours. Edit a value and FxMind remembers what the firm said, so you can always see what you changed and put it back with Use the firm's values.
Sensible numbers to start with
If you have no rules of your own yet and want somewhere to begin, these are ordinary and survivable. They are a starting point, not advice: your own risk is yours to decide.
- Risk per trade
- 0.5% to 1% of the account
- Daily loss limit
- 2% to 3%, which is three or four losing trades
- Maximum loss
- 10%, measured from where the account started
- Stop on every trade
- On. This one is not really negotiable
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