Prop Guardian Risk Manager MT4

Prop Guardian Risk Manager MT4 – Daily and Overall Drawdown Protection for Prop Firm Traders

Prop Guardian Risk Manager is a professional risk-control utility for MetaTrader 4, created for traders who work under prop firm rules. It does not open trades and does not implement any trading strategy. Instead, it runs in the background, monitors your account risk and can automatically block trading or close exposure when your own limits are reached.

Use it as a safety layer on top of your manual trading or existing Expert Advisors to follow prop firm rules more consistently and reduce the chance of avoidable rule violations. The utility relies on the data provided by your MT4 terminal (equity, balance, open trades, pending orders and Stop Loss) and acts strictly within the rules you configure.

The current generation adds several practical guardrails beyond the original daily/overall drawdown logic, including a projected loss headroom guard, an optional spread guard for newly opened trades, an evaluation progress tracker, a redesigned dashboard panel and more resilient lock-state persistence across terminal or VPS restarts.

If you need the MetaTrader 5 version, it is available separately in the Market: Prop Guardian Risk Manager MT5.

Public channel: CLICK HERE

Key Capabilities

• Daily loss protection: Monitors daily drawdown based on equity with two calculation modes: from prop-day start equity or from the highest equity reached during the current prop day.
• Overall loss protection: Tracks total drawdown from an initial balance, detected automatically on first run or set manually, and can trigger an overall lock when the limit is exceeded.
• Risk per trade and total open risk: Calculates the risk of open trades from their Stop Loss and lot size, then tracks combined open risk as a percentage of equity.
• Projected loss headroom guard: Estimates worst-case daily and overall loss using current loss plus open SL-based risk, then blocks new trades when there is not enough safe room left under your configured limit.
• Spread guard: Optionally checks the spread when a new market trade appears and can immediately close that trade if the spread is above your threshold.
• Automatic locks and optional forced exits: Can block new trades and, if you choose, close live trades and delete pending orders when drawdown, risk or session rules are breached.
• Prop timezone, sessions and manual override: Aligns the “prop day” with your firm’s timezone, can block trading outside allowed hours, and can show manual unlock buttons on the panel if you allow them.
• Redesigned dashboard panel: Shows daily and overall drawdown, open risk, equity, remaining prop-day time, projected-loss headroom, session status and evaluation progress in a cleaner card-based layout.
• Notifications and integration: Sends terminal, push and email notifications for warnings and lock events, and publishes key state values to MetaTrader global variables using an account-specific prefix.

Daily and Overall Loss Protection

The daily loss module focuses on the prop firm’s maximum daily drawdown rule. You define a maximum allowed daily loss in percent, based on equity, and a warning level (for example, 60% of the daily limit). Prop Guardian tracks equity against either the equity at the start of the prop day or the highest equity reached during that day, depending on the mode you select. When the warning level is reached, the utility can alert you; when the daily loss limit is hit, it can lock trading until the end of that prop day and optionally close managed trades.

The overall loss module tracks total drawdown across the lifetime of the account. You set an overall loss limit as a percentage of an initial balance. That balance can be detected automatically on first run or entered manually if your prop firm uses a specific reference value. If the overall loss exceeds your limit, the utility can trigger an overall lock, block new trades and, if enabled, close managed trades and delete managed pending orders.

Risk per Trade, Total Open Risk and Risk Locks

Beyond daily and overall loss, Prop Guardian can enforce limits on risk per trade and total open risk. For each open trade with a valid Stop Loss, it calculates the potential loss at the Stop Loss and converts it into a percentage of your current equity. It also sums all monitored open-trade risk into a total open risk percentage.

If these limits are exceeded, the utility can warn you, lock the account in a daily-style risk lock and optionally close managed exposure. This helps you keep risk under control even when multiple strategies or Expert Advisors are active at the same time.

Projected Loss Guard and Spread Guard

The projected loss guard is designed for traders who want a more proactive layer than a hard drawdown lock. Instead of waiting until the loss limit is actually hit, the utility estimates your projected worst-case drawdown using current used loss plus current open SL-based risk. You can also define a safety buffer under the hard drawdown limit. If the projected figure reaches that safe limit, new trades can be blocked immediately so you do not add more exposure when headroom is already too small.

The spread guard is separate from the projected guard. When enabled, it checks the spread at the moment a new market trade is detected. If the spread is above your threshold, the newly opened trade can be closed immediately. This is useful for traders who want to avoid entries during abnormal spread spikes, news spreads or low-liquidity conditions.

Evaluation Tracker

The latest version can also show evaluation progress directly on the panel. You can define a profit target percentage, a minimum number of trading days, a minimum number of profitable days and the threshold that counts as a profitable day. The tracker then summarizes challenge progress using closed profit relative to initial balance, the number of unique trading days, profitable days and a simple consistency-style summary. This feature is informational only; it does not replace the official dashboard of your prop firm.

Prop Timezone, Sessions and Lock Behaviour

Many prop firms define their trading day and rules according to a specific timezone. Prop Guardian allows you to align its internal “prop day” with your firm’s schedule by setting a GMT offset and custom day start and end hours. Daily statistics and resets then follow that prop-day definition instead of your local computer time.

You can also configure a trading session window and choose whether to block trades outside these hours. Lock behaviour is flexible: a daily lock remains in place until the end of the prop day, an overall lock remains active until you manually override it if allowed, and a risk-limit breach can be treated like a daily lock until the next prop-day reset. Lock and override state are stored in MetaTrader global variables and restored after terminal restarts, helping the utility resume its protection cleanly after downtime.

On-Chart Panel

The utility creates a compact dashboard on the attached chart so that you can see the current risk situation at a glance. The latest panel shows more context than the original version, including:

• State badge: normal, warning, headroom guard, session block, daily lock, overall lock, risk lock or override.
• Risk snapshot cards: daily drawdown, overall drawdown, total open risk and current equity.
• Overview lines: daily room, overall room, projected loss, risk room, spread/session status, equity/balance and the remaining prop-day countdown.
• Evaluation summary: optional progress line for profit target, trading days and profitable days.
• Manual actions: optional on-chart buttons for daily and overall manual unlock, depending on your inputs.

Symbol Filter Scope

The symbol filter limits which symbols are actively managed by the utility for new-trade blocking, forced closing/deleting, open-risk calculations and evaluation tracking. Daily and overall drawdown, however, are still account-level because they are equity-based. This is important when you use the product on an account that trades symbols outside the configured filter.

Basic Setup

1. Attach Prop Guardian Risk Manager to any chart in the account you want to protect.
2. Configure the daily and overall loss limits in line with your prop firm’s rules.
3. Set the prop timezone and prop-day start/end hours so the utility matches the firm’s definition of a trading day.
4. Decide how strict you want the protection to be: monitoring only, warnings plus locks, or locks with automatic close/delete actions.
5. If needed, enable the risk-per-trade and total-open-risk limits, then choose whether a risk breach should create a lock.
6. Optionally enable the projected loss guard, choose your safety buffer and decide whether new trades should be blocked when projected headroom is too small.
7. Optionally enable the spread guard and define the maximum spread you accept for newly opened trades.
8. If needed, enable trading-session control and define the allowed session hours, and decide whether trades outside this window should be blocked.
9. Optionally use the symbol filter to restrict active management to selected instruments, and enable the evaluation tracker if you want challenge-progress information on the panel.
10. Keep the utility running while you trade manually or via your own Expert Advisors so that it can monitor equity, risk and trading activity in real time.

Strategy Tester and Limitations in MT4

Prop Guardian is a utility, not a strategy EA. The Strategy Tester in MT4 can help you verify panel rendering, state transitions and some basic lock behaviour, but real behaviour depends on live trades, pending orders, actual equity fluctuations, Stop Loss placement, spread conditions and the way the EA detects new orders in real time. Always validate your configuration on a demo account before using it on a funded account.

User Guide and Demo Version

A detailed, step-by-step user guide with configuration examples and frequently asked questions, as well as a demo-only version of the utility that works on demo accounts, are available in the following MQL5 blog post:

Prop Guardian Risk Manager – Full User Guide & Demo Version

Important Notes and Risk Disclaimer

• Prop Guardian Risk Manager is a risk-management utility; it does not implement any trading strategy and cannot ensure profits or successful prop-firm evaluations.
• All calculations are based on the information available in your MT4 terminal. Prop firms may use slightly different methods to calculate drawdown, rule violations, profitable days or evaluation statistics.
• Risk-per-trade, total-open-risk and projected-loss calculations depend on valid Stop Loss placement. Trades without a Stop Loss do not contribute to those SL-based metrics, even though account-level daily and overall drawdown protection still works.
• The evaluation tracker is a convenience feature for your own monitoring. It is not an official prop-firm pass/fail engine.
• You are responsible for configuring the parameters in accordance with the actual rules of your broker or prop firm. The author cannot be held responsible for rule violations, financial losses or account terminations resulting from incorrect settings or use of the product.