These controls are as much a part of the product as the strategies themselves, and they apply to the whole portfolio rather than to any single trade. They decide how much Otto trades, and when it should trade less or stop altogether.
Otto's risk controls work at the level of the whole portfolio, not the individual trade. Some are always on: they set the size of every position and reduce or pause trading when an account is losing. Two further modes apply tighter versions of the same rules for accounts that need them, and one setting coordinates several accounts running at once.
The exact levels, percentages and limits are set inside the software and are not published. What follows is how each control behaves.
Two controls decide the size of every position. One you set once, to match your risk appetite. The other applies automatically to each individual trade.
A single setting scales the entire portfolio to your risk appetite: Low, Medium or High. It changes how much Otto risks on each trade, not which markets or strategies it trades. These settings describe risk, not expected returns. A higher setting means larger drawdowns as well as larger gains.
Every trade is sized so that the distance from entry to stop loss represents a fixed percentage of the account. A trade with a wide stop takes a smaller position than a trade with a tight stop, so each carries the same risk. Each strategy is scaled to its own risk profile before the portfolio setting is applied, and a hard limit caps the size of any single trade.
These controls reduce or pause Otto's trading on their own, without any input from you once it is running. The first two are the two stages of its drawdown protection.
If the account falls into drawdown beyond a set level, Otto halves the size of all new trades. Full size is restored once the account recovers.
If the drawdown continues beyond a second, deeper level, Otto stops opening new trades. Existing positions continue to their stop loss or target.
After a position on any instrument is closed, Otto waits for a set period before trading that instrument again. This prevents repeated entries into the same move.
Otto can be set to block new trades around high-impact scheduled news. This filter is always on in Prop firm mode.
Beyond the controls that are always on, Otto has two optional modes and one setting for running more than one account at a time.
An optional lower-drawdown profile, with fewer trades, longer lookback periods and earlier drawdown protection.
A dedicated mode for funded-account rules. It applies a low per-trade risk limit, a daily loss limit and a total loss limit, each set below the limits typically imposed by prop firms. When a limit is reached, Otto closes its positions and pauses trading.
Optionally, copies of Otto running on different accounts can be set to vary their entries so that they do not place identical trades at the same time.
It reduces the risk of breaching a firm's rules. It does not remove it, and you remain responsible for your account.
These controls are not a promise on a page. On Karnek you can see the stop loss and target on every trade Otto has taken, recorded read-only from the broker.