Follower Guard: Overview

Follower Guard was developed with the main objective of protecting follower accounts in situations that may occur during trades — situations that are inherent to the market and beyond our control — by disarming the follower or, in simpler cases, visually informing you that a follower account is out of sync with the leader.

Follower Account States

Follower accounts have four states, each shown in a different color:

The four follower account states and their colors.

• Out of sync (yellow)
• On (green)
• Off (gray)
• Disarmed (red)

Disarmed or disconnected follower accounts will not receive trade copies. Only connected (On) and Out of sync follower accounts continue to receive trades from the leader account.

The synchronization check only takes place on enabled (On) follower accounts, and only whenever the positions of the leader and follower accounts change.

Out of Sync Status

If a follower account has an open position while the leader account is flat, for example, the system informs you visually with a yellow color next to the follower account. Yellow means the follower is out of sync compared to the leader, but will continue to receive trades as normal.

Yellow indicates the follower is out of sync with the leader but still receiving trades.

With this, the trader knows there is a divergence between account positions and can trigger the follower Flatten button or take any other action they wish.

Follower Guard Configuration

The Follower Guard configuration can be accessed from the Replikanto Properties Menu:

Replikanto Properties Menu — where the Follower Guard settings live.

In the Follower Guard group you will see all the available options.

The Follower Guard group and its available options, including the email fields.

In the first two lines you can configure your email address and the subject of the email you will receive if one or more follower accounts are disarmed. You must configure an email account as a default "Mail" Share Service in the NinjaTrader General Options. When configured, Replikanto sends an email notification whenever a follower is disarmed. This lets you know when intervention may be needed, especially useful when running trades unattended. Prerequisite: NinjaTrader must be configured to send emails before this field has any effect. In NinjaTrader, go to Tools > Options > General and fill in the "Email log alert messages to" field. You also need to set up a mail account under Share Services in that same section. Once both are configured, disarm alerts will be sent automatically.

Email Alert Example

Sample email notification sent when a follower account is disarmed.

In the event of an automatic follower disarm, you will receive an email just like this one.

Example of the disarm alert email.

Follower Guard Actions

Now let's look at all the Follower Guard actions.

The first action is executed if the follower order is not filled by the market after the leader order is filled. It waits 5 seconds — or the number you define — before acting.

Action for when the follower order is not filled after the leader order.

The next action is executed if the follower becomes out of sync with the leader. Here you can also set a time before the action takes place (this action flattens the follower account).

Action for when the follower becomes out of sync (flattens the follower).

From version 1.5.3+ there is an action to flatten the follower account if it opens a position opposite to the one it should have.

From v1.5.3+, action for when the follower opens an opposite position.

The next actions (which also flatten the follower account) can be enabled and come into play after a certain time:

• Broker rejected the current order
• Unable to submit order
• Either the exchange or broker does not support order updates for the instrument in question, or the order has not yet been submitted
• Order cannot be canceled now, but may be successfully canceled later
• The order was sent with an unspecified error

Broker / exchange error conditions that can trigger an auto-flatten.

When enabled, all Follower Guard actions come into effect after the set time and will disarm follower accounts if the Disarm Followers option is checked (we will show how to disable that trigger below). When a follower account is disarmed, a message is displayed, an email is sent if configured, and the account turns red.

Disarmed Account and Rearm Function

A message is displayed when a follower account is disarmed.

The Rearm button is enabled after an account has been disarmed.

The Rearm button becomes available after an account is disarmed.

To rearm follower accounts you can use the Rearm button, the Flatten All button, or the individual follower account's Flatten button (X). When there are remote Replikantos, rearming follower accounts on the remote computer must be done from the follower Replikanto window — the leader Replikanto cannot rearm remote follower accounts.

Auto-Disarm Toggle

The automatic disarming of follower accounts described above can be turned off via the Replikanto menu or the Replikanto Properties window.

Replikanto menu to enable or disable follower auto-disarm.

Replikanto properties to enable or disable follower auto-disarm.

Some Follower Guard actions may not work on remote machines that receive trades remotely, because they are unable to check the status of the leader's position.

Remote Nodes

Replikanto nodes only show whether the node is off (gray), on (green), or away (red).

Remote node states: on (green), off (gray), away (red).

• On (green)
• Off (gray)
• Away (red)

A node is “away” when a trade was not received or returned an error.

A node (network or remote node) will be "away" when it is detected that it did not receive a trade, or it received it but returned an error (the log should be checked in all situations). Even when away, new attempts are made — but the trader will know so they can act to correct the communication error.

For remote nodes that are away, the recommendation is to turn them off until the problem is resolved, so that credits are not used up without the copy being delivered.