Notes from the desk

How the Auto-Pilot bots actually decide to trade

July 13, 2026

There's no crystal ball inside a Tradexa bot — just a disciplined pipeline that runs the same way every time, without fear or greed. Here's the whole thing.

1. Scan

On a schedule, the bot pulls a fresh universe of candidates — momentum leaders, oversold dip setups, long-term trend names, and (if enabled) options and crypto. It's looking across the market so you don't have to.

2. Score

Each candidate gets a score from a stack of objective factors: trend (above/below the 50- and 200-day), moving-average alignment, RSI, MACD crossovers, 20-day breakouts, one-month trend, relative strength vs the S&P, and whether it's overextended. A news read can nudge it up or down. Only names that clear your strategy's threshold move on.

3. Enter

When something qualifies and there's room under your position and budget limits, the bot sizes the trade and places the order at your broker — then confirms the fill actually happened before it books the position. It won't stack the same name across bots, and it won't re-buy something it just exited the same day.

4. Manage the exit

This is where discipline lives. Every position carries a stop-loss, a take-profit, and a trailing stop that arms once you're up enough. Wild movers get a little more room (their size was already trimmed at entry, so the dollar risk stays the same). "Smart exits" can bank a winner early when the market turns defensive.

The honest part: a great process still takes losing trades. Scoring high is not a prediction — it's a filter. The edge, if any, comes from doing the same disciplined thing thousands of times, not from being right on any single trade.

Practice before you risk a dollar

July 13, 2026

Practice mode runs a bot with fake money and real prices. It's the fastest way to learn how a strategy behaves — how often it trades, how it sizes, when it exits — without any money on the line.

Spin up a bot, pick a preset, and watch the activity feed. Read the reasons. See how the stops and take-profits actually fire in live conditions. When the behavior matches what you want, then think about real money — and start smaller than feels exciting.

What practice proves — and what it doesn't

It proves the logic: what the bot looks for and how it manages trades. It does not prove profit. Simulated fills don't include real slippage, spread, or fees, and past behavior never guarantees future results. Treat practice as a driving lesson, not a forecast.

Read the full honesty note on our Risk Disclosure page before going live.

The safety limits every member should set

July 13, 2026

The bots are only as safe as the guardrails you give them. Set these on day one — they're in each bot's settings.

• Max drawdown from peak — if the bot falls this far from its high-water mark, it goes to cash. Your circuit breaker against a bad streak.
• Daily loss limit — stop opening new trades once the bot is down this much on the day. Sleep-at-night protection. Hit "Resume Trading" to re-baseline when you're ready.
• Opening-bell wait — skip the first chaotic minutes after 9:30 ET so you're not chasing the open's whipsaw. Exits still run.
• Max positions & per-trade size — cap how concentrated the bot can get.
• Close everything — the one-tap panic button that flattens the bot on its next tick.

Options 101: what "auto" take-profit and stop-loss mean

July 13, 2026

When you leave a bot's option Take-Profit or Stop-Loss on "auto," it uses the built-in default for the options strategy you selected. Those defaults are a percentage of the option's premium (what you paid for the contract) — not the stock price.

So a balanced option on auto sells the contract when it's up about +60%, cuts it around −50%, and starts trailing once it's well in profit. Type your own number in either box to override the default any time.