To Have ATM Do Trade Management Only

This is good for people who want to do the trade entry by themselves, but after that want the trade management to be done by a computer. Such people might have a discretionary system for knowing when to place orders, but the trade management aspect is mechanical. Or maybe you're just at work and see a really good opportunity to buy but you don't have the time to baby-sit the trade once open.

First, you will need a trading system - the one that is going to do the trade management. And, that trading system will require entry rules and values because they are mandatory for a system to do anything at all. The trick is to set the entry rules such that they could never be true. For example, have two trading rules:

1. the Close must be above SMA(5)
2. the Close must be below SMA(5)

Both rules could never be true at the same time, so this trading system will never open an order by itself.

The entry value can be anything you like. I guess "enter at market" is easiest, remembering that it will never be triggered. Similarly, set the initial stop loss value to anything simple - maybe entry price minus 50 pips.

You then set up your trade management rules as per your preferences.

Set the auto-trading status of the trading system to be "Trade Mgmt Only". On the Command Centre, start the scheduled processes that download or create the price bars required by your system. And finally, make sure the auto-trading scheduled process is running. You are now free to place orders manually.

From here there are two possible scenarios - whether you can use ATM to place the orders, or whether you're at work or somewhere that you only have access to your broker's platform.

In either case, and this is ** very important ** ensure you always use a stop loss, and ensure a trading system has only one open trade at any time. It is also important to test these strategies in a demo account before proceeding with real money. As you should with any trading system.
 

If you can use ATM to place the orders

When placing your orders or trades manually, do it through the Order window. This lets you specify directly the trading system that opened the order or trade. Also put a tick in the "Handled by ATM" checkbox." Then that trading system (which you have currently auto-trading) sees the trade there and looks after it with its trade management settings.

It's better to use market orders though (which are turned into a trade instantaneously). Because the trading system's entry rules can never be true at the same time, and also because you have the status set to "Trade Mgmt Only", if the system sees an open order there it will want to cancel it.
 

If you can't use ATM to place the orders

In this case, you are restricted to using only one trading system per account to do your trade management (whereas with the above method you can choose from any number of trading systems).

Through the internet, or your broker's trading platform, open a new trade in your account. When ATM downloads the transactions for that account, it will see the new trade there. But because you didn't place the order through ATM, it will not know which trading system to use to manage the trade.

In this case, ATM normally says that the trade was opened by the "Unknown" system. And because the Unknown system doesn't auto-trade, that's the end of the matter as far as ATM is concerned.

However, you can change this so that ATM does not use the Unknown system, but rather uses a trading system of your choice. And this setting can be changed by editing the account (in ATM). Each account has a default trading system setting. Change it to be the system you want to do your trade management.

Now when you open a trade through your broker's platform, ATM will assign that trading system to look after it.