Auto-Sync Engine
Continuous position alignment between leader and follower accounts
Overview
Auto-Sync is the Trade Copier's continuous synchronization engine. It monitors follower positions against leader positions and automatically corrects any discrepancies it finds — partial fills, missed signals, connection drops, accidental manual closes, NT8 restarts, or anything else that breaks alignment.
Think of it as an insurance policy for your copier. Traditional copiers rely on catching every order event in real time, and when they miss one, you're stuck with a position mismatch that requires manual intervention. Auto-Sync eliminates that problem by constantly verifying the end result and fixing what's wrong, regardless of how the mismatch happened.
How It Works
Auto-Sync runs on a continuous loop (every 10 seconds by default, configurable down to a minimum of 3 seconds). On each cycle, it compares the follower's actual position against what the leader's position says it should be, accounting for your copier's ratio and direction settings.
If the positions match, nothing happens. If they don't, Auto-Sync submits a correction order on the follower to bring it back in line. This might be a market order to add contracts the follower is missing, a sell to trim excess, or a full flatten if the leader is flat and the follower isn't.
Auto-Sync resumes immediately after any disruption. If your connection drops and comes back, or NinjaTrader restarts, the very next sync cycle picks up where things left off and corrects whatever drifted while you were offline.
What It Handles
Auto-Sync doesn't care why positions are misaligned; it only cares that they are misaligned. This means it covers every edge case automatically, including situations that are difficult or impossible to handle with event-based copying alone:
Partial fills that leave the follower under-allocated
Signals that were missed entirely during a connection loss
Positions that were accidentally closed manually on the follower
State that needs to be restored after an NT8 restart or crash
Rounding differences when position ratios don't divide evenly
Any other change that breaks alignment between leader and follower
Correction Limits
Sometimes a correction order gets blocked — by Opposing Position Protection, prop firm rules, broker-side risk limits, or other constraints. Without safeguards, Auto-Sync would keep submitting the same blocked order every cycle, forever.
Correction limits cap how many times Auto-Sync will retry a failed correction before giving up, and the cooldown controls how long it waits between retries.
Settings
Max Attempts
1
How many times Auto-Sync will try to fix a specific mismatch before stopping.
Cooldown
300
How long (in seconds) Auto-Sync waits between retries when a correction didn't work.
How Corrections Are Tracked
Auto-Sync detects a mismatch and places a correction order. This counts as attempt 1.
If the correction worked (the follower's position changed), the system resets and goes back to normal monitoring.
If the correction didn't work (position is still wrong after the order was submitted), Auto-Sync waits for the cooldown period before trying again. During the wait, periodic warnings appear in the log so you know it's still aware of the problem.
After the cooldown expires, Auto-Sync checks whether it has any attempts left. If so, it tries again. If all attempts are used, it stops trying and logs an "Exhausted" message.
If the follower's position changes for any reason — a manual trade, a different signal, a delayed fill — the attempt counter resets automatically, and Auto-Sync starts fresh.
Examples
Default settings (1 attempt, 300s cooldown): Auto-Sync tries once. If the correction is blocked, it waits 5 minutes, then gives up. It won't try again unless the follower's position changes on its own, at which point the counter resets and it starts over.
3 attempts, 60s cooldown: Auto-Sync tries up to 3 times, waiting 60 seconds between each. If all 3 fail, it gives up. That's a total window of about 2 minutes before exhaustion.
What "Exhausted" Means
When you see an "Auto-Sync Exhausted" warning, it means every correction order was blocked or rejected. Auto-Sync stops retrying to avoid spamming your account with rejected orders.
You have two options:
Wait — if the underlying issue resolves itself (e.g., a conflicting position gets closed or a prop firm restriction lifts), Auto-Sync automatically resumes the next time the follower's position changes.
Manual Sync — use the Sync Followers button in the UI to force a sync, which bypasses correction limits entirely.
Manual Sync
The Sync Followers button provides instant realignment on demand. It compares all follower positions against their leaders and submits correction orders for any mismatches — bypassing correction limits and cooldowns entirely.
Use Manual Sync when:
You've made manual position adjustments on a follower and need to realign
You've changed copier configuration and want to apply it immediately
Auto-Sync is disabled and you want a one-time sync
Auto-Sync has exhausted its correction attempts and you've resolved the underlying issue
Log Messages
Mismatch detected
Auto-Sync found a difference and is placing a correction.
Attempt N/M
A correction order was submitted (N out of M maximum).
was sent, but the follower's position is still...
The last correction didn't work; waiting for cooldown to expire.
Auto-Sync Exhausted
All attempts used up — Auto-Sync has stopped trying until something changes.
Interaction with Strategy Lock
When a follower account has positions managed by Strategy Lock, Auto-Sync respects the copier's "strategy tag mode" setting. In skip mode, Auto-Sync will not attempt to correct tagged positions — they are left alone. In override mode, Auto-Sync removes the tag and corrects normally. See the Strategy Lock documentation for details on how each mode works.
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