Requires: Regular edition or above (not available in the Free edition)
What This Guide Covers
Three small additions that keep Trade Rules quiet until it matters:
The alert panel at the top of an Options Analysis window: a short wake-up call listing what is wrong right now.
History on the dashboard: what happened before, in case you were away.
Dormant rules: rungs of a ladder (21 / 14 / 7 days) that cannot matter yet are put to sleep and hidden by themselves, so a long rule list stays short.
Important: like all of Trade Rules, this only tells you. It never places, changes or cancels an order. It is new (BETA) and every number below is an example to tune to your own plan.
1. The Alert Panel: Your Wake-Up Call
When a rule is breached, a yellow panel appears at the top of the Options Analysis window of any symbol. Each line is one breached rule:
14:32 SPX #7: Time exit -> REDUCE
That is the time it was breached, the trade, the rule and the action you chose for it. Nothing more: values, levels and notes live on the dashboard.
Read the list. The most severe line is first. "(est.)" at the end means the prices behind it are an estimate.
Click Open Dashboard > in the panel's header. If only one trade is listed, the dashboard opens on it; otherwise it opens as you left it.
Deal with it on the dashboard. Select the rule and press Acknowledge or Snooze. The line leaves the panel at once. If the snooze runs out and the rule is still breached, the line comes back.
Or press the x in the panel to hide what is listed now. It stays hidden while those rules stay at the same level; a worse breach shows again.
The panel shows only what is breached now. A rule that goes back within limits simply disappears from it. For anything earlier, use History.
2. History: What Happened While You Were Away
Open the dashboard (Alt+J, or Trades ▸ Trade rules dashboard).
Click History in the toolbar. The lower grid switches from the selected trade's rules to its history, newest first, in your local time.
Read a row from left to right: When, Trade, Rule, What happened, Action, Detail. For example BREACHED REDUCE value 13.4, fires when it falls below 14, or back within limits value 30, or snoozed until 10-15 19:00.
Use the small menu that appears beside History to choose Selected trade or All trades, and the last 1, 7, 30 or 90 days.
Click History again to go back to the rules.
Good to know:
Acknowledges, snoozes and cleared acknowledgements are listed too (greyed), because they explain why something went quiet.
The rule buttons (Acknowledge, Snooze...) are switched off while History is showing.
The history is kept for 90 days, even after you restart SOAP2.
It records changes, not the state at start-up. A rule that is already breached when SOAP2 starts shows on the dashboard and in the panel, but starts no history line.
3. Dormant Rules: Ladders Look After Themselves
A ladder is one rule at several levels, for example Time exit: 21 Alert, 14 Reduce, 7 Close, shown as three rows (the later ones start with ↳). The stricter rungs cannot fire before the milder one does, so while the milder rung is still fine they have nothing to say. SOAP2 marks them dormant by itself and hides them:
With 64 days left you see only the 21 rung. The Now column of the hidden ones reads dormant - waits for the 21 level to be reached.
At 18 days the 21 rung is breached, so the 14 rung appears (it is the next to fire) and only the 7 still waits.
Nothing is stored and there is nothing to type.
Dormant rules are also left out of the counts and of the trade's status. To see them:
In the rules editor:More ▸ Show dormant rules. The line above the grid says how many are hidden ("2 dormant rule(s) hidden"). The rule you are editing is never hidden under you.
On the dashboard: the dashboard already shows one row per ladder. Filter ▸ Show dormant rules matters only for rules put to sleep by an explicit condition (see below).
4. Check Rules Only Speaks When It Matters
It does not ask you to apply a template to a leg group that has no rules: templates are optional.
On a trade with no rules at all it says nothing.
Changed Your Mind?
Undo:Ctrl+Z, as for every edit. Nothing counts until you press Save.
A rung you want to see: tick More ▸ Show dormant rules. Nothing is lost; the rungs are only hidden.
Learn More
Full documentation: Trade Rules user guide on the SOAP2 documentation site
Getting started with rules: SOAP2 Trade Rules Quick Start
Ready-made templates, rule by rule: SOAP2 Trade Rules Templates
