Documentation

Manual Trading & Orders

Manual trading submits an order you explicitly configure and confirm. It is separate from strategy deployment: a manual order is not automatically managed by a saved or deployed strategy.

Order workflow

  1. Open the trade ticket

    Open the order tool from Terminal or a supported symbol context. Select a connected account and verify the symbol and side.

  2. Configure the order

    Choose quantity or notional sizing where supported, order type, time in force, price fields, market-open deferral, and optional protective settings.

  3. Review the preview

    Astral normalizes the request, checks account access and size fields, and displays warnings. Preview acceptance is not a broker fill or guarantee.

  4. Submit and track

    Confirm the order, then follow its lifecycle in Orders or the account detail page. Keep tracking an uncertain or partial result instead of assuming failure or completion.

Supported ticket controls

The order API represents buy and sell sides; market, limit, and stop-limit orders; DAY, GTC, GTD, IOC, and FOK time-in-force values; quantity or USD notional; limit and stop prices; optional market-open deferral; and optional bracket-style take-profit and stop-loss percentages. The ticket only offers combinations supported by the selected account and current workflow.

Conditional orders

A conditional order waits for a reviewed price or expression condition before routing the associated order request. The builder can represent nested logical conditions and generates a readable description, but the expression itself is authoritative.

Conditional review includes the trigger, expiry, notification profile, and order details. Intrabar evaluation is restricted to simple price conditions; indicator and custom-expression conditions use bar-close evaluation.

Status and cancellation

Order state can progress through created, routing, accepted, pending, partial, filled, rejected, canceled, failed, or expired outcomes. Deferred orders include a scheduled time or reason. Cancellation is available only when the current order state reports it as eligible, and a cancellation request can race with a broker fill.

Why an order may fail

  • Account missing, disconnected, inactive, or unavailable.
  • Unsupported symbol, asset class, order type, or time in force.
  • Invalid quantity, notional, limit, stop, or protection fields.
  • Insufficient cash or buying power.
  • Market hours, settled-funds, margin, or account-permission restrictions.
  • Broker rejection, timeout, or an ambiguous network result.

Sizing: quantity versus notional

Quantity specifies units or shares. Notional specifies a currency amount and depends on the broker’s support for fractional or amount-based orders. A notional preview can resolve to an estimated quantity that changes with price; verify the final broker record.

For sell orders, confirm whether the request reduces an existing position or could create unsupported short exposure. Account permissions and the live position determine what the broker accepts.

Order types and trade-offs

  • Market prioritizes execution opportunity over price certainty.
  • Limit controls the worst acceptable price but may remain unfilled.
  • Stop-limit waits for a stop trigger and then becomes a limit order; it can trigger without filling.
  • DAY/GTC/GTD describe persistence, subject to broker behavior and market calendars.
  • IOC/FOK impose immediate-execution constraints and can cancel unfilled quantity quickly.

Not every broker, asset, or account supports every combination. The ticket can narrow controls after account selection.

Protective instructions

Take-profit and stop-loss settings describe intended protective behavior, but their actual broker representation and lifecycle can vary. A stop does not guarantee an execution price, and related orders can race with manual actions or fast markets.

After an entry fills, verify whether the expected protective orders exist at the broker. If you manually change the position outside Astral, inspect or cancel stale protection that could later create unintended exposure.

Order-state investigation

When Astral and the broker appear to disagree, compare the broker order ID, symbol, side, quantity, timestamps, and partial-fill quantity. Network timeouts can make a successful submission look uncertain from the initiating screen. That is why submitting an identical replacement before checking can duplicate exposure.

For cancellation, wait for a terminal broker state. “Cancel requested” is not equivalent to “canceled,” and a fill can occur while the request is in flight.

Pre-submission checklist

  • Correct account and instrument.
  • Buy or sell side.
  • Quantity or notional and estimated exposure.
  • Order type, price fields, and time in force.
  • Current market session or defer-until-open behavior.
  • Protective settings and existing open orders.
  • Buying power, position, and account restrictions.
  • Preview warnings and final confirmation.