Position Limits & Account Risk Rules
MimikTrader does not cap contracts per order — position size comes from the follower's sizing multiplier, and account risk is controlled by dollar- and count-based rules that run on every tick.
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A common question from traders coming from other copiers is: “where do I set the max contracts per follower?” MimikTrader does not have a per-order contract cap. There is no setting that clamps a follower's order to a maximum number of contracts. This article explains what controls position size instead, and the real account-level rules that protect your prop firm accounts.
max(1, ceil(leaderQty × multiplier)) — multiplier-only, with no per-follower ceiling. The risk engine (drawdown and loss limits, described below) is the backstop against oversized exposure, not a contract cap.What Actually Controls Position Size
Every follower has a sizing multiplier that scales its order quantity relative to the leader's. A multiplier of 1.0 mirrors the leader's size, 0.5 trades roughly half (rounded up, minimum 1 contract), and 2.0 doubles it — with no maximum. See Position Sizing: How Follower Multipliers Work for the exact formula and worked examples.
Because there is no contract cap, the number of contracts a follower trades scales directly with how large the leader trades and the multiplier you choose. If you need to keep a follower's typical order size within a prop firm's own position-size rule, choose a smaller multiplier — there is no separate safety clamp underneath it.
What Actually Protects Your Account
Instead of a per-order contract cap, MimikTrader protects each follower account with a set of dollar- and count-based rules that run continuously — not just when a new order arrives, but on every price tick for any account with an open position.
Daily Loss Limit
A maximum dollar amount a follower account can lose in a single trading day, tracked across realized and unrealized P&L. If the limit is breached, the account is flattened and locked for the rest of the day. See Daily Loss Limits & Profit Targets for full details.
Trailing Drawdown Protection
MimikTrader tracks an equity high-water mark that rises as the account profits but never decreases. The trailing drawdown threshold is a fixed dollar distance below that high-water mark — if equity drops to the threshold, the account is flattened and locked. This is the closest analog to a prop firm's own trailing drawdown rule, and it is enforced on every price tick, not just at order time. See Trailing Drawdown Protection for the full mechanics.
Profit-Drawdown Protection
A separate check on open (unrealized) losses. It measures the open loss against a profit base — the greater of the day's realized profit and your Trailing Drawdown amount — and flattens when the loss exceeds the configured percentage of that base (30% by default). With the scale option on, the allowance rises to 50% once the day's realized profit reaches at least twice the Trailing Drawdown amount. This keeps a won day from being handed back by one open position.
Max Daily Trades
An opt-in limit on the number of closed trades a follower account can make per trading day. On Tradovate, every buy/sell fill pair the broker settles counts as one, so closing a position in parts counts each part. On ProjectX, Rithmic and Volumetrica, a position going back to flat or reversing counts as one. Once the limit is reached, open positions are flattened and copying to that account stops until the 5:00 PM CT reset. Unlike the loss and drawdown rules, this one does not lock the account.
Auto-Flatten and Account Locks
When any of the rules above is breached, MimikTrader responds immediately: all open positions on the affected account are closed with market orders, all pending orders are canceled, and the account is locked. While it is locked, the leader's orders are not copied to it, closes included; if the leader goes completely flat on a symbol, its position in that symbol is still flattened. Locks clear automatically at the relevant reset (daily or weekly) or, for a trailing-drawdown lock, persist across resets. See Auto-Flatten & Account Locking for the complete lock lifecycle.
Why No Contract Cap?
MimikTrader uses proportional multiplier scaling with no artificial ceiling, the way other professional trade copiers size followers. A hard per-order cap can silently clamp a trade to a smaller size than intended without rejecting it or telling you — which hides a configuration problem rather than surfacing it. Dollar- and count-based risk rules that flatten and lock the account are a more direct match for how prop firms actually enforce their own limits.