PropGuardian Setup Guide — Protect Your Prop-Firm Account in 5 Minutes
Most funded traders don't lose their account to a bad strategy. They lose it to one bad day that breaches a daily-loss or max-drawdown rule. PropGuardian is an account-level guardian that watches your equity in real time — including floating P/L — warns you early, closes everything before your firm's limit is hit, and locks the day.
This guide walks you through the complete setup. It takes about 5 minutes.
Step 1 — Attach it to ONE chart
PropGuardian guards the whole account, not a symbol. Attach it to any single chart — the symbol and timeframe don't matter. Do not attach it to multiple charts: one instance is enough, and several instances with different settings would compete over the same shared state.
Two things to check:
- The Algo Trading button in the toolbar must be ON — otherwise PropGuardian cannot close positions.
- After attaching, the panel in the top-left corner should show PROTECTING in green.
Step 2 — Pick a preset (or configure your own limits)
The first input, Rule preset, offers three ready-made configurations:
| Preset | Daily loss | Max drawdown | For |
|---|---|---|---|
| FTMO style | 4.5% of initial | 9.0% static | Firms with 5%/10% static rules, CE(S)T daily reset |
| Trailing firm | 4.5% of day reference | 7.0% trailing equity | Firms with trailing drawdown (8% style) |
| Conservative | 3.0% of initial | 6.0% static | Anyone who wants a wider safety cushion |
Notice the numbers are below the typical firm limits (4.5 instead of 5, 9 instead of 10). That is deliberate: you want PropGuardian to stop you BEFORE the firm does. Breach detection is tick-based — in a fast market the final loss can overshoot the configured level by a few points before the close executes, and the margin absorbs exactly that.
Always verify your firm's current rules. Firms change them, and presets are starting points, not guarantees. For anything custom, set Rule preset = Custom and configure the limits directly — including a fixed money amount instead of a percentage if you prefer.
Initial balance is auto-detected from your first deposit. If your account has a longer history (withdrawals, multiple deposits), set it manually.
Step 3 — Set your daily reset time
This is the setting most protectors get wrong. Your firm's "daily loss" day does not necessarily end at your broker's server midnight.
- Broker server midnight — fine if your firm measures by your broker's day.
- Midnight at GMT offset — for firms with a fixed reset zone. Example: for a CE(S)T-based reset use offset 2 in summer (CEST) and 1 in winter (CET). The offset is static, so remember to adjust it at daylight-saving changes.
Step 4 — Understand the panel
- Equity / Balance — live values.
- Daily loss: Used % — how much of today's limit is consumed, with the exact numbers next to it.
- Stop-out equity — the equity level at which PropGuardian will act today. This is the number to keep in your head while trading.
- Max drawdown: Used % / floor — same logic for the overall drawdown limit.
- The colors escalate: neutral → orange (60%+) → red (85%+).
Step 5 — Choose the action and notifications
The Action on limit breach input is the heart of the tool:
- Close all + lock (recommended) — closes all positions, deletes pending orders, and locks the day. While locked, ANY new trade — from any EA or manual entry — is closed immediately.
- Close all — closes everything but does not lock.
- Alert only — never closes anything. Only choose this if you really just want a warning system; the panel will remind you with an orange "no protection!" status.
The early warning (default: at 70% of the limit) fires exactly once per day — popup, push notification and/or e-mail. For push notifications on your phone, enter your MetaQuotes ID in the terminal settings (Tools → Options → Notifications).
What a breach actually looks like
When the limit is hit, the escalation is fast. This is a real breach on my demo account — provoked deliberately as part of the release test:
Three open positions closed within 150 milliseconds, pending orders deleted, day locked:
While the day is locked, any new trade is closed within about a second. This costs one spread per attempt — an MQL5 Market limitation: products cannot switch off Algo Trading, so prevention-by-instant-close is the strongest possible enforcement.
The part most protectors get wrong: restarts
If your terminal restarts — Windows update, VPS reboot, crash — most protection tools forget everything and happily let you trade again. PropGuardian persists its state per account and restores it on startup, including an active lock:
The lock releases automatically at the next daily reset. Removing the EA from the chart deliberately wipes its stored state — that is the intended "manual reset" if you ever need one (and yes, that also means: closing the chart removes the lock; the tool protects your discipline, it cannot replace it).
Test it before you trust it
Do what I did before releasing: on a demo account, set Rule preset = Custom, Daily limit measured as = Fixed money amount, Daily loss limit (money) = 5, open a small position, and watch the whole chain fire — warning, close-all, lock, instant-close of a new trade. Two minutes, and you have seen with your own eyes what will protect you on the real account.
Honest limitations
- PropGuardian cannot PREVENT other EAs from opening trades during a lock (no DLLs allowed in the Market) — it closes them immediately instead.
- Attached mid-day for the first time, the day-start equity is approximated from realized history; same-day restarts restore the exact value.
- The GMT offset does not auto-adjust for daylight saving.
- Tick-based detection means a possible small overshoot beyond the configured limit in fast markets — plan your margins accordingly.
Questions? Ask in the product comments or send me a message — I trade behind this tool myself, so reports from other brokers and firm setups genuinely interest me.
