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Prop firm trading

cBots for prop firm trading

A funded account is not a small account with a bigger balance: it is an account with two loss limits, a restricted-strategies list and a reset clock. This page is what every one of those rulebooks counts, what to ask of any robot before it trades an evaluation, and the cBots listed on the cTrader Store - each with the preset it needs and the drawdown that preset actually measured.

The cBots on the cTrader Store

Every card links to its own Store listing and to its documentation. The block under each one says what it takes to run it inside a firm's limits.

More cBots are in development; each will be listed here, with its own prop-firm page, once it is approved on the Store.

Bullion Horizon: a gold grid, and the preset that is not one

As shipped it is a grid - up to eight tickets a side, closed together at a basket target - and its published run reached a 30.0 % equity drawdown. That configuration is not built for prop-firm limits, and its Store trading profile says so.

Its Low Drawdown Gold H1 preset is the one to look at: one ticket at a time, a hard stop and target, a 01:00 to 10:00 window, and a worst maximum equity drawdown of 8.7 % with a worst single day of 2.8 % across six backtest runs over three windows. The preset is inside the cBot, chosen from the first setting.

On a funded account: the detailBuy on the cTrader Store

The four things a firm counts

Rulebooks differ in wording, rarely in shape. Almost all of them count the same four things, and only the first three are under a robot's control.

What is countedWhat it means for a cBot
A daily loss limitMeasured from balance or equity at the firm's own reset clock, not your broker's. A cBot needs a timed close and a session window that sit inside that day.
A total loss limitUsually measured on equity, so open positions count against it. Floating loss is the number that ends accounts, not realised loss.
A restricted-strategies listGrids, martingale, hedging between accounts, latency and news scalping. Read it before you choose a configuration, not after.
A profit target, minimum days, consistencyNothing a robot can promise. It can stop once a target is reached; it cannot make the market provide one.

That is why the pages below lead with a drawdown figure rather than a return. A return tells you what a configuration made on data that has already happened. The drawdown tells you whether the account would still have been open at the end of it.

What to ask of any cBot before it touches an evaluation

  • Can it be made to hold one position at a time? If adding to a loser is built in and cannot be switched off, the restricted-strategies list has already decided for you.
  • Is there a stop on every ticket, at the broker? A stop that lives in the robot's memory is gone when the platform is.
  • Is there a floor on the whole account, and is it on by default? Most are off by default, including the one here. Check, and set it.
  • Can it be stopped by the clock? A timed close inside the firm's day is what keeps a bad afternoon from becoming a breach at the reset.
  • What is its worst equity drawdown, over how many windows? One good window is not evidence. Ask for the runs, including the ones that went nowhere.
  • Does it say what it cannot do? A page that only lists wins is not documentation.

Test it on the firm's own feed first

Every firm's cTrader account is a live broker feed with its own spreads, its own commission and its own server clock, and a configuration that behaved on one broker's ticks can behave differently on another's. Run the backtester on the account you were given, at that account's balance and leverage and with that broker's commission, over a window you did not choose for its result. Then read the equity drawdown and the worst single day before you read anything else.

Two things no backtester can do: it cannot apply a news filter, because it carries no economic calendar, and it always runs on server time. Both make a backtest slightly more active than the live configuration, not less.

What none of this can do

None of these cBots carries a rule guard. The Expert Advisors for MT4 and MT5 do - a guard that takes a firm's numbers from a dropdown and decides when the EA must stop - but on cTrader the limits are yours to set, from the controls each product's page lists by name. Nothing here knows that your firm changed a limit last week, and nothing here can make an evaluation finish faster than the market allows. Your firm's dashboard is the authority on its own numbers, and a backtest is a record of the past, not a prediction.

The other half of the catalogue

The MT4 and MT5 Expert Advisors carry a prop-firm rule guard that takes a firm's numbers from a dropdown and decides when the EA must stop. Among the cBots, AuricFlow, Quotient Drift and Cross Pair Forge carry the same kind of guard; the grid cBots do not, which is why this page hands you the controls for those instead.

If you need a cBot built to one firm's rulebook, that is custom work: send the firm, the programme and the rules, and the specification comes back before anything is paid.