Prop Guardian Risk Manager MT5

Prop Guardian Risk Manager MT5 – Daily and Overall Drawdown Protection for Prop Firm Traders

Prop Guardian Risk Manager is a professional risk-control utility for MetaTrader 5, created for traders who operate 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 positions 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 MT5 terminal (equity, balance, positions and Stop Loss) and acts strictly within the rules you configure.

If you need the MetaTrader 4 version, it is available separately in the Market: Prop Guardian Risk Manager MT4.

Key Capabilities

• Daily loss protection: Monitors daily drawdown based on equity with two calculation modes (from day start equity or from the highest equity reached during the day).
• Overall loss protection: Controls total drawdown from an initial balance (detected automatically or set manually) and can lock trading if the limit is exceeded.
• Risk per trade and total open risk: Calculates risk for each position from its Stop Loss and size, and tracks total risk across all open trades as a percentage of equity.
• Automatic locks and optional closes: Can block new trades and, if you choose, close existing positions and delete pending orders when configured limits are breached.
• Prop timezone and sessions: Aligns the “prop day” with your firm’s timezone and day start, and optionally blocks trading outside allowed session hours.
• On-chart monitoring panel: Shows the current state (normal, warning or locked), daily and overall loss, total open risk and the remaining time in the prop day.
• Notifications: Sends alerts via the terminal, push notifications and email when warning levels or limits are reached.
• Advanced integration: Publishes key values and lock flags to MetaTrader global variables (with a dedicated prefix) for users who want to connect their own tools.

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 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 a 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 positions.

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 all current positions.

Risk per Trade and Total Open Risk

Beyond daily and overall loss, Prop Guardian can enforce limits on risk per trade and total open risk. For each position, it calculates the potential loss at the current Stop Loss based on the instrument’s price scale, tick value, volume and your current equity, and expresses it as a percentage. You can define a maximum risk per trade and a maximum total open risk across all monitored positions.

If these limits are exceeded, the utility can warn you, lock the account or both, depending on your configuration. This helps you keep risk under control even when using multiple strategies or Expert Advisors at the same time.

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, while an overall lock normally stays active until you manually unlock it. Buttons for manual unlock can be shown on the panel if you allow them in the inputs. Lock state is stored and restored using MetaTrader’s global variables so that it survives terminal restarts.

On-Chart Panel

The utility creates a compact panel on the attached chart so that you can see the current risk situation at a glance. Typical information includes:

• State: normal, warning, locked by daily loss, locked by overall loss or outside the allowed trading session.
• Daily: current daily profit or loss in percent relative to your daily loss limit.
• Overall: current overall profit or loss in percent relative to your overall loss limit.
• Total risk: total open risk in percent relative to your maximum total risk setting.
• Prop day countdown: time remaining until the end of the prop day according to the configured timezone and day end hour.

If manual unlock is enabled, the panel can also display buttons to unlock daily or overall locks, subject to the permissions you have configured.

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: only alerts, alerts plus locks, or locks with automatic closing of positions.
5. If needed, enable trading session control and define the allowed session hours, and decide whether trades outside this window should be blocked.
6. Optionally, use the symbol filter to restrict monitoring to specific instruments (for example, only indices or only FX pairs).
7. 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

Prop Guardian is a utility, not an Expert Advisor. The Strategy Tester in MT5 has limited support for utilities and is mainly useful to verify that the panel displays correctly and that lock logic reacts to changes in a simple test scenario. Real behaviour depends on live positions, actual equity fluctuations and the Stop Loss values used on your trading account. 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 MT5 terminal (equity, balance, open positions and Stop Loss levels). Prop firms may use slightly different methods to calculate drawdown and violations.
• 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.
• The utility is intended for traders who already understand prop firm rules and basic risk management and want an additional technical layer to help them respect those rules.