There are a few avenues by which our vendors may adjust and manage their risk settings. Our risk management system is quite versatile and allows for a large amount of flexibility between both the partner and the end user.
The primary way that our partners manage risk is by using Template Accounts. Template accounts will be setup to your specifications by an Eval Support representative.
When creating an account, you can use the templateAccountId field to specify from which template the created account will inherit its risk settings. The new account will inherit both its Risk Category and its AutoLiq Profile from the chosen template.
Risk Categories are templates that define pre-trade risk. These are settings such as the following:
Read our Pre-Trade Risk section for more details.
AutoLiq profiles are also inherited from the template account. An AutoLiq Profile controls calculations related to margin. The main thing that partners can use this entity for is to define a closing time for their users. In combination with a RiskTimePeriod entity, the AutoLiq Profile can be used to automatically liquidate all users at the time defined in the RiskTimePeriod. An Eval Support representative will create and setup your initial RiskTimePeriod, but you may later edit the time for special events (such as holiday trading hours).
When you create an account for a user, there is another configuration option that you can use to directly influence risk settings for an account. On the createEvaluationAccounts endpoint’s individual account definitions, you can add the preTradeRisk field to define custom UserAccountPositionLimits and UserAccountRiskParameters. See the Pre-Trade Risk section and CreateEvaluationAccounts endpoint for more details.
Where pre-trade risk settings are checked before a user opens a trade, post-trade risk settings are evaluated after an account has entered into a position. You can read more about these features in the Post-Trade Risk section. There are two ways to setup Pre-Trade Risk, as well as a scenario for users to set their own custom risk.
The easiest way to setup Post-Trade Risk is to assign it at the time of account creation (CreateEvaluationAccounts). Use the postTradeRisk field on an account entity to set these settings up. See our Post-Trade Risk Management section for more details.
userAccountAutoLiq/update MethodThese same settings can be adjusted after account creation using the userAccountAutoLiq/update endpoint. It accepts all the values described above, except it can be called after an account’s creation to customize the settings.
A user can be allowed to set their own custom post-trade risk settings, as long as those settings are more restrictive than the Partner-level settings. They have access to the same settings listed above, except that they must be defined to be more restrictive than those set by the Partner account-owner.
Product fungibility allows you to set unified risk limits across related products by using conversion ratios. Instead of managing separate limits, you can set one limit that applies to all related products, making risk management simpler and more flexible.
For example:
With fungibility, you can trade different contract sizes within the same product family and they’ll all count toward a single, unified risk limit.
With an exposed limit set to 3, product fungibility would allow any of the following:
This gives traders flexibility to use different contract sizes while maintaining consistent risk exposure.
To enable product fungibility, you must contact the API support team to configure the necessary settings on your behalf. A complete fungibility setup requires settings for both a Position Limit and a corresponding Risk Parameter. Please include all the required information in a single request.
When contacting support, please specify the following:
Provide the following details to define the main position limit.
Total By: Specify how the position limit aggregates positions for risk checks.
FungibleProduct: Applies the Fungible Exposed Limit to each fungible product family individually.Overall: Applies the Fungible Exposed Limit as a total across all specified fungible product families.Fungible Exposed Limit of 5, a user under the FungibleProduct setting can hold 5 ES-equivalent contracts and 5 NQ-equivalent contracts. Under the Overall setting, their combined total across both families could not exceed 5.Fungible Exposed Limit: Enter the total exposed limit for the position.
Fungible Product: Specify the base product for the position limit. Leave this blank to apply the limit to all product families.
GC.For the position limit to take effect, you must also request a corresponding risk parameter with the following details.
Fungible Max Opening Order Qty: The maximum order quantity (taking fungibility into account) when opening a position.
5 and the net position is 0, a user cannot buy or sell more than 5 ES contracts or 50 MES contracts in one order.Fungible Max Closing Order Qty: The maximum order quantity (taking fungibility into account) when closing a position.
5 and the net position is 10 (long), a user cannot sell more than 5 ES contracts or 50 MES contracts in one order.Fungible Product: Specify the base product for the risk parameter. To apply to all products, leave this blank.
GC.Use the following examples as templates for your support requests.
To set an exposed limit of 5 on each individual fungible product family:
FungibleProduct5To set an exposed limit of 5 on the Gold product family without limiting other fungible product families:
Overall5GCTo set an exposed limit of 15 across all fungible product families combined:
Overall15To set an exposed limit of 5 on the Gold family and 5 on the S&P 500 family, you must request two separate position limits.
Request for Position Limit 1:
Overall5GCRequest for Position Limit 2:
Overall5ES