Configurable parameters
Every knob the five cBots — Guardian, Balanced, Edge, Pegasus Gold and Pegasus Nasdaq — expose in cTrader — with its default, its range and what it does. The cBot ships the tier preset that reproduces its published figure; you only need to change a value if your account, broker or prop rules differ. Change the calibrated parameters and you are off the published map — that is your responsibility.
The free edition exposes this same panel. Since v3.3 / v2.3 the free, backtest-only edition carries every parameter on this page — presets, per-strategy controls, risk caps, prop-firm guards and the risk overlays — so you can optimise the book against your own capital, your own broker's costs and your own prop rules before paying for anything. Two things still separate the editions: the verbose event log is fixed off, and the free edition cannot open a position on a live or demo account — it runs in the Backtester and the Optimizer only. It ships with a preset file holding the certified values, so one click puts you back on the published configuration after a session of tuning.
1 · Preset & mode
The master switches: which tier the bot runs, how it sizes, and the portfolio-level risk scale.
Preset & mode 8 params
| Parameter | Default | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preset | its tier (FTMO) Custom (Pegasus) | differs per cBot — see the map below | One switch that loads a whole risk profile. Every cBot offers Custom plus the tiers at or below its own, so it can only ever step down to a calmer profile, never up to a hotter one. Why the two lines ship differently: each FTMO cBot ships selected on its own tier, because that tier is what produced its published figure. The Pegasus pair ships on Custom on purpose — its Edge preset sets a 1.00× risk scale, which is already the default, so Custom gives you the identical risk without overwriting anything you type. |
| Sides | Both | Both · BuyOnly · SellOnly | Global trade direction. A per-sleeve Sides can override this individually. |
| Sizing mode | FTMO: Additive Pegasus: Compound | Additive · Compound | Additive = risk% off a fixed base (no compounding); Compound = off live equity. Each product is published on the mode it ships with, so leaving it alone is what reproduces the figure. |
| Initial balance (additive base) | 0 = auto | ≥ 0 | Fixed base for additive sizing. 0 uses the account balance at start. |
| Risk scale (× all strategies) | per tier | 0.05–3.0 FTMO 0.05–10.0 Pegasus | Master multiplier over every sleeve's risk%. At the tier default the published figure is reproduced; scale it to match your account size. The FTMO line is capped lower on purpose — a prop account has a ceiling it cannot argue with; the retail books leave the decision to you. |
| Max open positions | 10 · 16 · 20 11 Gold · 8 Nasdaq | 1–50 | Cap on simultaneous open positions. It counts slots, not strategies: a robustness ensemble runs one strategy at three neighbouring settings, so it can hold three positions at once. That is why Edge caps at 20 while being priced as 14 strategies. |
| Prop-firm mode | true | bool | Enables the FTMO-style daily reset and the prop-firm guards below. |
| Max margin usage % (0 = OFF) | 30 | 0–100 | Blocks new entries once margin usage would exceed this. 0 turns it off — the engine always treated 0 that way; until v3.3 it was the slider that would not let you type it. |
The map — which presets each cBot exposes
Straight out of each compiled cBot. The Free "Backtesting only" edition of every product exposes exactly the same list.
| cBot | Presets it offers | Ships selected on |
|---|---|---|
| Guardian | Custom · Guardian | Guardian |
| Balanced | Custom · Guardian · Balanced | Balanced |
| Edge | Custom · Guardian · Balanced · Edge | Edge |
| Pegasus Gold | Custom · Conservative · Balanced · Edge · Bull · Bear | Custom |
| Pegasus Nasdaq | Custom · Conservative · Balanced · Edge · Bull · Bear | Custom |
Guardian is the calmest FTMO tier, so it offers only itself and Custom. Edge, the hottest, offers all three plus Custom. The FTMO tiers and the Pegasus tiers are different sets — a "Balanced" on Edge is not the same thing as a "Balanced" on Gold, as the two tables below show.
Which presets each cBot really has — and exactly what each one writes
A preset is not a label: selecting one writes real values into the fields below it. These are the only options each product has, straight from the compiled cBot.
| FTMO preset | Risk scale | Daily-loss guard | Max-DD guard | Global risk cap | Max open pos. | Offered by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Custom | Nothing is written — every field keeps the value you typed. | Guardian · Balanced · Edge | ||||
| Guardian | 0.5016× | 3.3% | 6.0% | 4.0% | 10 | Guardian ships · Balanced · Edge |
| Balanced | 0.523× | 3.5% | 8.0% | 4.5% | 16 | Balanced ships · Edge |
| Edge | 0.636× | 4.0% | 8.5% | 5.5% | 20 | Edge only ships |
So Guardian offers exactly two options: Custom and Guardian. A cBot can only step down to a calmer tier, never up to a hotter one — you cannot turn Guardian into Edge.
| Pegasus preset | Risk scale | Sides | Guards | Offered by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Custom | your value (1.00× default) | your value (Both) | untouched | Gold ships · Nasdaq ships |
| Conservative | 0.40× | unchanged | untouched | Gold · Nasdaq |
| Balanced | 0.523× | unchanged | untouched | Gold · Nasdaq |
| Edge | 0.636× | unchanged | untouched | Gold · Nasdaq |
| Bull | 1.00× | BuyOnly | untouched | Gold · Nasdaq |
| Bear | 1.00× | SellOnly | untouched | Gold · Nasdaq |
On the Pegasus line a preset only sets the risk scale (and the trade side, for Bull/Bear). It never touches the guards. Both ship on Custom, so out of the box nothing is overwritten.
Important — your edits only stick on Custom.
While a named preset is selected, the cBot re-applies that preset's values at every start — first launch,
restart, reconnect — overwriting whatever you typed in those fields. On the FTMO cBots that is the risk scale, both guards,
the global risk cap and the position cap; on Gold and Nasdaq it is the risk scale (and the side, for Bull/Bear).
If you want your own numbers to hold, set Preset = Custom first, then type them.
The flip side: leaving the shipped preset alone is exactly what reproduces the published backtest.
Since v3.3 it says so out loud. The behaviour is unchanged — the preset must win, that is what reproduces the published figure — but the log now names every field the preset wrote over, with the value you typed and the value it installed. Before, your edit was discarded without a word, which is how you could run for weeks convinced a guard was set to something it was not.
Since v3.3 it says so out loud. The behaviour is unchanged — the preset must win, that is what reproduces the published figure — but the log now names every field the preset wrote over, with the value you typed and the value it installed. Before, your edit was discarded without a word, which is how you could run for weeks convinced a guard was set to something it was not.
What each preset is for
| Preset | Line | What it is for — when you would pick it |
|---|---|---|
| Custom | both | The only mode that leaves your own numbers alone. Pick it the moment you want to run anything other than the shipped configuration — a different account size, a prop rule of your own, a risk scale you calibrated. Nothing is written for you, so nothing is overwritten. |
| Guardian | FTMO | The calmest funded profile: smallest risk scale, tightest guards (3.3% daily, 6.0% max-DD), fewest simultaneous positions. Pick it on a first evaluation, on a firm with hard daily limits, or any time passing matters more than the size of the number. |
| Balanced | FTMO | The middle profile — more risk scale and a wider 8.0% max-DD band than Guardian, still comfortably inside a Swing challenge. The default choice once you have passed at least one evaluation. |
| Edge | FTMO | The hottest funded profile, tuned to sit just under the 8% prop ceiling (0.60× risk scale, 8.5% max-DD guard, 20 positions). For a funded account you already hold, or a firm whose ceiling you know you can use. |
| Conservative | Pegasus | Runs the same book at 0.40× risk. Pick it for a small or a live personal account, or as a first month while you watch the cBot behave on your own broker's spread. |
| Balanced | Pegasus | Same book at 0.60×. The middle setting between proving it and running it at full published size. |
| Edge | Pegasus | Full 1.00× risk — the sizing the published figure was produced on. This is the setting that reproduces the backtest on the product page. |
| Bull | Pegasus | Full risk, long trades only (Sides = BuyOnly). A directional opinion overlay: you keep the whole book but let it act only when it wants to buy. Useful if you hold a structural long view on gold or US tech and do not want the short sleeves fighting it. |
| Bear | Pegasus | Full risk, short trades only (Sides = SellOnly). The mirror image — the book only acts on its short signals. Note that both Bull and Bear cut roughly half the trades, so the published figure no longer applies. |
Bull and Bear are a view, not a risk tier: they keep the risk scale at 1.00× and only filter direction. Everything published on this site is measured with Sides = Both.
2 · Per-sleeve knobs
Every sleeve is its own group in cTrader (10 / 16 / 20 of them), labelled by its market and timeframe. That is more groups than the 8 / 12 / 14 distinct strategies you are buying, because a few strategies ship as a robustness ensemble — the same strategy at three neighbouring parameter settings at a third of the risk each, so the book never bets on one exact number. They appear as separate sleeves on the same market and timeframe. Every sleeve exposes the same three knobs — turn a sleeve off, dial its risk, or fix its direction, or retire it without orphaning the trades it already has open — all without touching the others. The strategy logic itself stays proprietary.
Per strategy sleeve 4 knobs × each sleeve
| Parameter | Default | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| · On | true | bool | Enable or disable this individual sleeve. |
| · Risk % (0 = as designed) | 0 | 0–5 (step 0.05) | Risk-to-stop for this sleeve, before the master Risk scale is applied. Leave it at 0 and the sleeve uses the weight it was validated with — which is what reproduces the published figure. Type a number and you override that one sleeve, and only that one. |
| · Sides | Inherit | Inherit · Both · BuyOnly · SellOnly | Direction for this sleeve. Inherit falls back to the global Sides. |
| · Mode v3.3 | OpenAndManage | OpenAndManage · ManageOnly · OpenOnly | What the bot may do with this sleeve. ManageOnly stops new entries while it keeps trailing, breakeven and time exits running on whatever is already open — the clean way to retire a sleeve, since switching it off outright leaves its open trades with nobody managing them. OpenOnly is the mirror image. Note that OpenOnly drops the management layer, not the strategy's own exit rule: that is signal, not money management. |
3 · Risk caps
Portfolio-level ceilings that hold even if you raise the risk scale — they stop concentration and cap total open risk.
Risk caps 2 params
| Parameter | Default | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asset risk cap % | 2.5 | 0–100 (0 = off) | Max summed risk-to-stop on any ONE symbol — prevents a single market concentrating risk. |
| Global risk cap % | 4.5 | 0–100 | Max summed risk-to-stop across all open positions at once. |
4 · Daily-loss guard
The prop-firm daily rule, mirrored in the bot: stop before the firm's daily-loss line bites.
Daily-loss guard 3 params
| Parameter | Default | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily loss guard % | 3.3 · 3.5 · 4.0 5.0 Pegasus | 0.5–5.0 FTMO 0.5–100 Pegasus | Daily loss at which the bot stops trading for the day (and closes, per the toggle below). Counts on the prop firm's CE(S)T server day. Since v3.3 a restart mid-session no longer reopens the day's whole allowance — the reference is remembered, not recaptured. |
| Daily entry lock % | 0 = off | 0–5.0 FTMO 0–100 Pegasus | Daily loss at which NO new entry opens — open positions are kept. Ships off, because the published figures were measured with it off. |
| Daily guard closes all | true | bool | Whether the daily guard also flattens open positions when it trips. |
Daily reset window 3 params
| Parameter | Default | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily reset clock v4.0 | CentralEuropean | CentralEuropean · EasternEuropean · NewYork · Utc · FixedUtcOffset | Which clock the bot's trading day runs on. The daily-loss guard captures its reference (the higher of balance and equity) at this boundary and measures the day's loss against it, so this decides what the bot calls "today". The default is FTMO's 00:00 CE(S)T. Pick the one your firm uses: CentralEuropean for FTMO and most CET-based firms; EasternEuropean (EET/EEST) for a firm that says "midnight server time", because EET is the server clock of nearly every cTrader broker; NewYork with hour 17 for a firm that rolls on the 5 pm FX rollover; Utc for a firm that measures in plain UTC; FixedUtcOffset for a server that follows no daylight-saving calendar at all. |
| Daily reset hour (in that clock) v4.0 | 0 | 0–23 | What time of that clock the day rolls over. 0 = midnight, which is what FTMO and most firms use. Set it if your firm resets at some other hour — a midday reset is 12, the 5 pm FX rollover is 17. The hour shifts the date the guard is working in, which is the whole mechanism: with hour 12, everything before 12:00 still counts as yesterday's day. |
| Daily reset UTC offset h (Fixed only) v4.0 | 0 | −12 to +14, step 0.5 | Only read when the clock is FixedUtcOffset; ignored by every other setting, so it can never be applied twice. Use it when your firm quotes a fixed offset that holds all year (for example "UTC+1, no DST") rather than a timezone that moves with daylight saving. Half-hour offsets are supported. |
Why this matters, and how to set it safely. Your firm's daily-loss rule is measured over their day. If the bot's day starts at a different time, the two windows overlap instead of matching: a loss can fall inside one day for them and the next day for the guard — the guard still works, it is just measuring a different 24 hours. Up to v3.3 the boundary was hard-wired to 00:00 CE(S)T because the whole line was built against FTMO's rulebook; from v4.0 you can move it.
The rule of thumb: land after your firm's reset, never before. If a firm resets somewhere inside a window — say between 11:30 and 11:59 and they will not tell you exactly where — set the hour to 12, not 11. Rolling after them means the bot's day never restarts while their day is still running. Rolling before them hands the bot a fresh daily allowance that their day has not granted yet, so it could spend one allowance in the morning and another in the afternoon while the firm counts it all as one day. Being late is conservative; being early is the one direction that can breach a rule.
Until you know the exact time, size the guard for the worst case: set Daily loss guard % to a little under half your firm's daily limit, and Daily entry lock % below that, so the bot stops opening new trades well before the hard stop. Then even the worst overlap across their day stays inside their rule.
The bot tells you what it chose. Every start prints the window it is actually using —
The rule of thumb: land after your firm's reset, never before. If a firm resets somewhere inside a window — say between 11:30 and 11:59 and they will not tell you exactly where — set the hour to 12, not 11. Rolling after them means the bot's day never restarts while their day is still running. Rolling before them hands the bot a fresh daily allowance that their day has not granted yet, so it could spend one allowance in the morning and another in the afternoon while the firm counts it all as one day. Being late is conservative; being early is the one direction that can breach a rule.
Until you know the exact time, size the guard for the worst case: set Daily loss guard % to a little under half your firm's daily limit, and Daily entry lock % below that, so the bot stops opening new trades well before the hard stop. Then even the worst overlap across their day stays inside their rule.
The bot tells you what it chose. Every start prints the window it is actually using —
🕛 daily guard window resets at 12:00 CE(S)T (Europe/Prague) — and with Prop-firm mode on and the clock moved away from FTMO's, it adds a reminder that this is no longer FTMO's boundary. If the timezone cannot be resolved on the host at all, Prop-firm mode refuses to start rather than falling back to UTC in silence, because a silent 1–3 hour shift is exactly how a daily rule gets breached. FixedUtcOffset is exempt from that refusal by design: it needs no timezone database, which is what makes it the safe choice on a bare host.Two things that are not what they look like.
EasternEuropean is not "CET + 1 hour" and NewYork is not a fixed offset. The three daylight-saving calendars differ — the US switches about three weeks before Europe in March — so they are resolved as real timezones, not as offsets. An offset that is right in July is wrong in March. Use
The defaults reproduce the published backtest exactly.
FixedUtcOffset only when your firm genuinely does not observe daylight saving.The defaults reproduce the published backtest exactly.
CentralEuropean + hour 0 runs the same code path as every version before it, so the figures on the product pages and the certified baselines do not move by a tick. Changing the clock changes which 24 hours the daily guard measures — nothing else. And note that while the tier preset does not overwrite these three, the downloadable .cbotset preset file ships them at the FTMO defaults: load it after configuring and it will put them back.5 · Max drawdown guard
The hard floor — total drawdown at which everything halts.
Max drawdown guard 2 params
| Parameter | Default | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Max drawdown guard ON v3.3 | true | bool | The guard's own switch. It was always on and there was no way to say otherwise. |
| Max drawdown guard % | 6.0 · 8.0 · 8.5 25 Pegasus | 1.0–100.0 (step 0.5) | Total drawdown at which ALL trading halts. Raising the slider does not loosen a prop account: with Prop-firm mode on, the guard is still clamped to the tier's own ceiling. The slider used to stop at 30, which only ever misrepresented where the real limit was. |
Since v3.3 a halt survives a restart. If this guard stops the bot, restarting cTrader — or moving to another machine — no longer brings it back to life. That was exactly the case the guard existed to cover, and it was the one case it did not cover.
6 · Balance protection
An optional soft floor under a losing streak. Off by default — the tier presets don't need it, but it's there if your firm wants an extra brake.
Balance protection 6 params
| Parameter | Default | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balance protection | Off | Off · EquityEma · ProfitTarget | Mode. EquityEma trails a balance EMA and pauses risk below it; ProfitTarget locks in profit once a target is hit. |
| EMA period (days) | 20 | 2–200 | Length of the balance EMA (EquityEma mode). |
| EMA buffer % | 0.0 | 0–20 (step 0.1) | Slack below the EMA before the guard triggers. |
| EMA close-all on breach | false | bool | Whether an EMA breach also flattens open positions. |
| Profit target % | 10.0 | 1.0–100.0 (step 0.5) | Profit level that arms the trail (ProfitTarget mode). |
| Profit trail gap % | 2.0 | 0.5–20.0 (step 0.5) | Give-back gap once the profit trail is armed. |
7 · Risk overlays
A dynamic layer on top of position sizing. Both overlays can only ever REDUCE risk.
Risk overlays 7 params
| Parameter | Default | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vol-target de-lever | false true on Pegasus Gold | bool | When the book's own recent volatility runs hotter than the target, every new position is scaled down. It only ever de-risks — it never adds leverage (the multiplier is capped at 1.0). |
| Vol-target annual % | 14 | 0–50 (step 0.5) | The annualised volatility the overlay aims at. Lower means it starts trimming sooner. |
| Vol-target lookback (days) | 40 | 5–120 (step 5) | How much recent history the volatility estimate uses. Shorter reacts faster and is noisier. |
| Vol-target floor | 0.5 | 0.1–1.0 (step 0.05) | The furthest it may ever de-lever. 0.5 means risk is never cut below half. |
| Equity de-risk | false | bool | While the book's equity sits below its own moving average, the risk of new entries is cut. A safety net for bad stretches; open positions are untouched. |
| Equity de-risk EMA (days) | 30 | 5–120 (step 5) | Period of the equity moving average used as the line. |
| Equity de-risk factor | 0.5 | 0.1–1.0 (step 0.05) | Risk multiplier applied while below that line. 0.5 = half risk. |
The published figures use the defaults as shipped — vol-target ON for Pegasus Gold, both overlays OFF everywhere else. Switching one on (or off) is a legitimate choice, but the backtest you reproduce will no longer be the one on the product page. Verify any change with the free edition first.
When you might want them on: turn vol-target on if your account cannot stomach the volatile stretches (it trims size when the book gets hot, at the cost of some upside). Turn equity de-risk on if you would rather ride out a losing streak on smaller size than at full risk — it is a brake for bad runs, not a performance setting.
When you might want them on: turn vol-target on if your account cannot stomach the volatile stretches (it trims size when the book gets hot, at the cost of some upside). Turn equity de-risk on if you would rather ride out a losing streak on smaller size than at full risk — it is a brake for bad runs, not a performance setting.
8 · Account uniqueness (anti-copy)
Expectancy-neutral levers that make each account trade a slightly different variant of the same edge, so no two accounts emit identical trade streams. The primary lever — a 60–120 second entry-time jitter on live/demo — is hardcoded (not a dial) and never applies in backtest, so you reproduce the published figure exactly.
Account uniqueness 4 params
| Parameter | Default | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| B: account sleeve keep % | 100 | 50–100 (step 5) | Optionally dilutes the per-account sleeve subset (100 = all sleeves trade). |
| B: min active sleeves (floor) | 6 | 1–50 | Floor for the setting above, so a dilution never starves the book. |
| Max new entries per day | 0 = unlimited | 0–100 | Frequency cap on new entries per UTC day. Exits and management don't count. |
| News blackout windows (UTC CSV) | "" | CSV of windows | Windows with no new entries — for a non-Swing account that must avoid the news. Swing products ship this empty. |
9 · Advanced
Broker mapping and diagnostics — most accounts never touch these.
Advanced 3 params
| Parameter | Default | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Symbol overrides | "" | CSV | Remap a market to your broker's symbol, e.g. USATECHIDXUSD=US100.cash. Raw/ECN suffixes auto-map. |
| Manual quote→acct rates | "" | CSV | Last-resort FX rates for sizing, used only in custom-data backtests; broker data never needs it. |
| Verbose event log | true | bool | Logs actions only (label · side · lots · risk% · P&L · guard names) — never SL/TP, ATR or rules. Forced OFF in the free edition so structure can't leak. |
How each preset reproduces its tier
A preset simply loads the risk scale, position cap and guard thresholds for its tier. Keep the defaults and you reproduce that tier's published cTrader-native backtest.
| Dimension | Guardian | Balanced | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Risk band | Conservative | Balanced | Aggressive |
| Distinct strategies | 8 | 12 | 14 |
| Max open positions | 10 | 16 | 20 |
| Markets | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Master risk scale | 0.5016 | 0.523 | 0.636 |
| Daily loss guard | 3.3% | 3.5% | 4.0% |
| Max drawdown guard | 6.0% | 8.0% | 8.5% |
| Global risk cap | 4.0% | 4.5% | 5.5% |
| Max DD · equity (backtest) | −4.13% | −5.26% | −5.78% |
| Price · one-time | $160 | $240 | $280 |