Every Kara tool, step by step: what it measures, how to set it up, and what it does differently from the software you already know. Written from the application itself, version 1.2.51.
Kara brings together, in a single piece of software, what an active trader usually stacks: a trading journal, an order-flow charting platform, a position copier, an execution terminal, an economic terminal and a lab for automated strategies. All of these tools read the same accounts.
The application comes as a desktop app (Windows, Linux) and as a web app. Your Kara account, your settings and your data are the same everywhere: you can prepare a strategy at the office and review your trades in the evening on another computer.
Your trades arrive on their own. Kara reads your accounts straight from your broker or platform: no CSV export, no manual entry. A position can be neither typed in nor edited by hand. That is what makes your statistics, your rank and your performance card verifiable.
One account, every tool. The trade you review in the journal shows on the chart where you took it, the risk simulator replays the same history, and the copier and the terminal act on the same accounts.
Guards run on the server. Virtual stops and targets, copier limits and daily guards are enforced by Kara's servers, not by your computer: they keep working when it is switched off.
Numbers that state their assumptions. The All-Data account measures each trade within its own account before combining your accounts, a position copied to five accounts counts once, and every simulation writes its assumptions on screen.
Prop firms are built in. 44 firms and their rules are already in Kara; the copier and the terminal know how to stop before the daily loss, and the journal tracks the progress of your challenges.
Kara is not a broker. It passes your orders on to your broker or platform, does not execute them itself, and never holds your funds.
The copier only copies you. It replicates your own orders between your own accounts; it does not copy other traders' positions.
Kara is not investment advice. It is a tool for analysis, journaling and risk management. Trading carries a risk of capital loss, and simulations rely on past data.
Chapter 2
Install and subscribe
Choose between the desktop application and the web app, create your account, start the 14-day trial and understand what each plan opens.
There are two ways to use Kara, with the same account. You do not have to choose: many traders keep the desktop app at their desk and the web app everywhere else.
Desktop application
Web app
Systems
Windows and Linux
Any recent browser, on a computer or a phone
Installation
.exe installer (Windows) or AppImage file (Linux), from the Download page
The trial opens everything for two weeks: journal, copier and terminal, up to 3 tracked accounts, no credit card. It starts from within the application, with the Start my free trial button.
The application shows the days left while the trial runs.
A Kara account gets the trial only once.
When the trial ends without a subscription, your accounts and history stay saved; the modules reopen as soon as you subscribe.
The Quantitative section follows its own logic: simulating a strategy costs nothing, optimisation and the Kara AI assistant are paid in compute tokens, and connecting a strategy to an account requires a plan that includes the copier. Everything is detailed in Automated strategies.
Each plan includes a number of active accounts, meaning accounts tracked live. Beyond that, add extra accounts to your subscription, or archive an account you no longer use.
An archived account no longer counts towards your subscription and is no longer tracked, but its history stays in your journal, your All-Data account and your rank. Archiving can be undone at any time, within your active account limit. See Connect your accounts.
Everything happens in Settings > Subscription, without going through support.
Changing plan or number of accounts applies immediately. If the new amount is higher, the difference is charged; if it is lower, the surplus is deducted from the next payments.
Cancelling: the subscription runs until the end of the paid period, then stops. No notice period, no fee.
Your data stays: accounts and history are kept even after the subscription ends.
Invoices: Settings > Invoices. Payment methods are managed in Subscription.
Chapter 3
Connect your accounts
Link MetaTrader, cTrader, Rithmic or a crypto exchange, understand what each kind of link allows, and follow the connection until live tracking.
Every account feeds the journal. The terminal, the copier and automated strategies also need to place orders: it all depends on the platform and on how the account is linked.
Platform
Journal
Terminal
Copier
Strategies
MetaTrader 4 / 5, master password
Yes
Yes
Master and follower
Yes
MetaTrader 4 / 5, investor password
Yes
No
No
No
cTrader
Yes
Yes
Master and follower
No
Rithmic (CME futures)
Yes
Yes
Master and follower
Yes
Crypto exchange
Yes
No
No
No
To start: Profile and Social > Accounts > Add a new account, then choose the Account type.
Kara opens your account in a MetaTrader terminal hosted on its own servers. That is what gives it the floating data of your positions (floating gain and drawdown, MAE and MFE), and what lets it keep tracking the account while your computer is off. Your credentials are encrypted on Kara's servers; the connection is automated and nobody on the team looks at them.
1
Choose the MetaTrader type.
2
Fill in Login, Broker and Server.
If your broker or server is not in the list, type its exact name: it is case-sensitive. The server name is in your account opening email and in MetaTrader.
3
Choose the Password type, Master or Investor, then enter it.
4
If it is a prop-firm account, give the firm, the phase and the challenge size.
Kara often recognises the firm from the broker. This information drives challenge tracking, see Prop firms and challenges.
5
Confirm, then follow the connection on the account card.
Master password
Lets Kara place orders: terminal, copier, automated strategies, and closes decided by the risk engine. Required as soon as you use the copier.
Investor password
Read-only. The journal works, but the broker refuses every order: the terminal replies that the account is linked read-only.
Follow the connection
The account card shows the current step. A normal connection goes through these steps, in this order:
1
Queued
2
Terminal reserved, then Starting the terminal
3
Connecting to the broker, then Account authorized by the broker
4
Configuring the terminal, then Terminal ready, connecting to Kara
5
Kara connected, synchronizing
6
Live tracking: the account is linked and its history comes in.
When the connection fails
Message
What to do
Credentials refused by the broker
Check the login, the password and the server, then edit the account.
Account disabled or blocked at the broker
Talk to your broker or prop firm: Kara cannot fix it.
Server unreachable
The name entered is not recognised, or the server does not answer: check its exact name.
The terminal stopped unexpectedly
Nothing: a new attempt starts automatically.
The terminal is connected but Kara receives nothing
Nothing: a new attempt starts automatically.
Automatic setup failed, service unavailable, internal error
The team is notified. If nothing has moved after a day, write to support.
Rithmic gives access to your CME futures accounts. Your credentials are only used to open the connection to Rithmic's servers; Kara's server holds that session and places your orders on it, with no terminal to install.
1
Choose the Rithmic type, then your Rithmic system in the list.
2
Enter your Rithmic user ID and your password.
The ID comes from your broker or prop firm (AMP, Apex, Topstep…). It is case-sensitive.
3
Click Verify my credentials.
4
Select the accounts to link, then Link selected accounts.
One ID can hold several accounts: Kara lists them all, with a search box. You can link as many as your subscription allows.
If the Rithmic connection drops, the account card says so and Kara reconnects automatically.
Your accounts sit in three groups, which you can filter:
Active
An open position, or a position closed within the last three weeks. An account you have just added stays here while it connects.
Almost inactive
Last position closed three weeks to a month ago.
Inactive
Nothing for over a month, or an archived account.
Reorder: the arrows on the card move the account in the list.
Archive: the account no longer counts towards your subscription and is no longer tracked, but its data stays for your journal, your All-Data account and your rank. Unarchive reverses it, within your active account limit.
Copier master account: it cannot be archived. Replace or remove it in the copier first.
Delete: a trading account is not deleted from the application, it is archived. For a permanent deletion, write to support.
Chapter 4
Trading journal
Read your results account by account or across all accounts, find where you win and where you lose, and spot the habits that cost you.
The account selector picks one account or the All-Data account. The period is set in one click (day, week, month, year, full history) or with custom dates. Filter by tags restricts every analysis to the positions carrying certain tags.
The All-Data account
It gathers the positions of all your accounts, archived and demo included. Each trade is first measured as a percentage and in R of the account that took it, then the accounts are combined in time order. The same trading decision copied to several accounts counts once, on the master account when there is one; the discarded positions stay visible in the CSV export.
Currency amounts only show when all your accounts share the same currency. Otherwise the view sticks to R and percentages, and the screen shows Mixed currencies.
The performance chart plots your result over time, with realised figures and floating extremes: the maximum floating gain and maximum floating drawdown reached while positions were open. It shows what your positions went through, not only where they ended.
The social hexagon places your profile on five axes (win rate, RR, drawdown, number of positions, risk) and overlays the average Kara user.
Current live positions lists your open positions, with the price and the risk-engine rules applied to them (virtual stop and target, break-even, partial exits). You can close a position, fully or partly, by percentage or by volume. Pending orders lists your unfilled orders.
Historical positions is the table of all your closed trades: time, symbol, ticket, side, volume, entry, SL, TP, exit, profit, commissions, tags and images. For each position:
Tags: up to 20 per position, from 50 tags you define (setup, session, mistake…). They feed Performance by strategy tag and the tag filter.
A comment of 500 characters and up to 5 images (1 MB each): a screenshot of your analysis, the market context.
Stop moves: the history of SL and TP changes over the life of the position.
Below the table, each panel answers a precise question:
Win rate
Share of winning positions, by symbol. Results below 0.2% of the balance are not counted: a trade closed at zero is neither a win nor a loss.
Return
Net or gross, by day, week, month, day of the week, and by session (London, New York, Tokyo).
Drawdown
Realised or floating, read position by position or over time.
Reward / Risk
The actual RR (average gain divided by average loss) against the intended RR (from the stops and targets you had set). The gap tells you whether you stick to your plans.
Sharpe, Sortino, Calmar
Return relative to volatility, to downside volatility only, or to maximum drawdown. Your Sharpe is compared with the users' average.
MAE / MFE
Maximum adverse and maximum favourable excursion of each position: how far it went against you, and in your favour, before the exit.
Risk / Reward distribution
How your results spread in R, with or without break-evens.
Gains calendar
Day-by-day result, in currency or in R, with best day, worst day and active days. Clicking a day opens its trades.
Temporal heatmap
Average R or win rate by day and hour, in local time, with your best and worst slot. Each cell needs a few trades before it shows.
Performance by symbol
Your instruments ranked, by result or in R.
Duration × result
Each trade placed by holding time and result in R, with the trend. Shows whether your long trades pay or cost.
Time under water
Cumulative time spent below your previous peak, and the longest period under water.
Fees summary
Commissions and swap, in total and per position.
Tax summary
Trading turnover and net transfers to your own accounts, to prepare your tax return.
Performance by strategy tag
Win rate and result of each tag: the most direct way to know which setup makes you money.
From 10 closed trades, Kara analyses the sequence of your trades and spots eleven biases. It derives a hygiene score out of 100, with its trend over the last 30 days.
Bias
What Kara looks for
Revenge trading
Re-entry less than 10 minutes after a loss, on the same symbol or with an inflated size.
Post-loss escalation
Size at least double that of the previous loss, within 24 hours.
Overtrading bursts
Days with at least twice your usual number of trades.
Winners cut too early
Winners closed below 50% of a potential (MFE) larger than your average gain.
Losers left to run
Losses of at least twice your average loss, closed without the stop being hit.
Disposition effect
Your losses are held much longer than your gains.
Gains given back
Trades that ended red after a floating gain at least twice the final loss.
No stop loss
Positions with no stop detected.
Erratic risk
Very irregular realised loss sizes.
House-money oversizing
Size inflated after three consecutive wins.
Late-night trading
Entries between midnight and 5 am, local time.
Why? explains each signal with your own numbers: your usual re-entry delay against the one observed, for instance.
The cost of each bias is estimated in R over the period. Costs do not add up: one position can feed several biases.
Tag the new ones puts a tag on the positions concerned, so you can find and filter them.
Six good habits are recognised too: systematic stops, consistent sizing, patience after a loss, stopping after a red streak, winners held, journal kept.
From 30 closed trades, the journal projects what your trade distribution can produce next. Two views:
Heatmap
Your trades drawn at random with replacement, at a fixed risk of 1% of initial capital. The density of simulated paths shows where you are most likely to be in N trades.
Prediction curve
Same draw, but each gain applies to the running balance, like an account whose position size follows equity. Median and p5-p95 and p25-p75 bands.
The simulation also gives the probability of reaching given levels, and of hitting a prop-firm target before the loss limit.
PDF report: for the period and accounts shown, it gathers net result, positions, success rate, profit factor, expectancy, maximum drawdown, average gain and loss, fees, streaks, balance evolution, result by month and by symbol, and your best and worst positions. Every page states that the data comes straight from your accounts and cannot be edited.
CSV export (Export): every position in the table, with gross and net P&L, commissions, swap, gain in %, R, close reason and balance after exit. In the All-Data view, positions discarded as copy duplicates are included with the original position.
For a crypto spot account, this tab follows your portfolio as an investor, not as a trader: holdings with average price and floating P/L, allocation, cumulative P/L, performance against a reference asset (base 100), holding time, best and worst assets, fees.
Chapter 5
Chart
Show a market in order flow, draw with 71 tools, save your styles and find your own trades on the chart where you took them.
Laboratory > Chart. To change asset, just type a letter: the search opens. To change timeframe, type a digit, then Enter to confirm or Esc to cancel.
Crypto, Stocks, Forex, Indices
The main asset families, filterable in the search.
CME
Futures contracts: S&P 500 (ES, MES), Nasdaq 100 (NQ, MNQ), Dow Jones (YM), Russell 2000 (RTY), crude oil (CL), gold (GC) and currency futures.
Aggregated
Unified mode combines Binance, Bybit and OKX into a single book: volume and flow from three venues on the same candle. One click goes back to a single exchange.
Spot and futures
For crypto, the cash market or perpetuals. On perpetuals, the funding rate shows venue by venue, with its annualised value.
Five layouts: Single view, Two side by side, Two stacked, Three panels, Four panels. Each panel keeps its own asset and timeframe.
Footprint, Pression (pressure), DOM, Tape, OB Heatmap, Open Interest, Liquidations, NL/NS, Ecart entre places (cross-venue spread), GEX Heatmap, Niveaux gamma (gamma levels)
Context
Economic News, Historique des positions (position history)
Footprint
Each candle opened into buy and sell volume per price level. On some markets no history exists: only the candles formed since the chart opened are built, and the screen says so.
Delta, CVD
Difference between buy and sell volume, per candle (delta) or cumulated (CVD). CVD par taille separates small orders from large ones.
Volume Profile, TPO
Volume traded, or time spent, at each price level.
DOM
The live order book next to the price, with Recenter. Desktop application only.
OB Heatmap
The order-book history as a heatmap: where liquidity sat, and when it disappeared.
GEX Heatmap, Niveaux gamma
Market makers' gamma exposure on options, and its key levels, drawn on the price. See the economic terminal.
Economic News
Economic releases placed on the time axis.
Historique des positions
Your own trades, entries and exits, on the chart where you took them.
Optimise an indicator
An indicator's Optimize button tests its settings on the history of the asset shown. Choose an approach (rejection, continuation after a break, attraction, reversal from a zone, momentum, signal cross), the target and invalidation as ATR multiples, and the horizon in candles.
Settings are ranked on the first 70% of the history, then checked on the next 30%, which is never used for ranking. Success counts signals that reach the target before the invalidation: chance gives about 50%. The score keeps a cautious lower bound of it, which penalises settings with few signals. Apply sets the chosen setting on the indicator.
71 tools, sorted into seven groups: lines, shapes and channels, Fibonacci and Gann, positions and measures, patterns, annotations, and more tools (volume profile over a range, anchored VWAP, cycles…).
Magnet: one click for the weak magnet (snaps to nearby OHLC), a second for the strong magnet (always on the nearest OHLC), a third to turn it off.
Stay in drawing mode: draw several times with the same tool without picking it again.
Favourites bar: the starred tools, in a floating bar you place wherever you like.
Objects: the list of the symbol's drawings, to hide, lock or delete them.
Tool shortcuts
Each tool can carry a shortcut: Alt plus a letter or a digit, with Shift if needed. The most common tools have one by default; Set a shortcut changes a tool's shortcut. The full list is in the appendix.
Drawing styles
A drawing's settings are split into four tabs: Style, Text, Coordinates, Visibility. A good style is saved as a template (Save drawing template as…), set as the tool's default, and reapplied in one click. Kara also remembers the last style used for each tool.
Conditions on a drawing
A drawing can react to price. In its conditions, choose a trigger: touch, cross, above, below, close above, close below, retest, after N candles, or at a date. Combine several criteria with All (AND) or Any (OR), then choose the effect:
Change style
A zone that turns red once broken. Reversible makes the style follow the live state instead of freezing.
Stop extension
The drawing freezes into a historical segment at the trigger candle. Nothing is deleted.
The Styles button saves the whole chart configuration (indicators and settings) under a name, in folders. The Community tab shows styles published by other users, by popularity or by date: Import adds them to yours. Share one of your styles with Publish to community.
On a tuned indicator, Add to a style saves only its parameters into one or several existing styles, without touching the rest.
Styles > Connect TradingView brings in your colour themes, your drawing templates and your favourite tools.
1
Prepare your colours in TradingView.
On your chart: right-click > Colours > Save theme. For drawing templates, select a tool, then Template > Save template.
2
Open the browser console on tradingview.com.
Signed in, on a chart, press F12 (or Ctrl + Shift + I) and open the Console tab. Show your favourite tools bar: that is how your pinned tools are retrieved.
3
Copy the script from Kara, paste it into the console and press Enter.
The kara-tradingview.json file downloads. In Chrome, if pasting is blocked, type allow pasting then Enter before pasting.
4
Drop the file into Kara.
Choose the themes to import, the drawing templates (each becomes the default style of the matching tool) and the favourites, then Import selection.
The chart's order ticket places a Limit order or a Market order: choose the account, the price, the take-profit, the stop-loss and the risk in percent, then Confirm order. On a long or short position drawing, Take the trade reuses the entry, stop and target you drew.
Laboratory > Economic Terminal. Everything starts from the asset chosen at the top of the page: search it by name, symbol or keyword. Its price shows next to it.
Releases and news are filtered for that asset: by the pair's currencies for forex, by the reference currency for an index, by the factors that move it for a commodity.
The terminal has seven tabs: Calendar, Seasonality, News, Earnings, Dividends, US Markets and Options Flow. Visible tabs hides the ones you do not use. Earnings and Dividends only appear for a stock.
The list of scheduled releases (GDP, inflation, employment, central bank decisions…), with their impact, the consensus and the countdown to the next one. Key releases today sums up what matters today.
Clicking a release opens its page: historical progression, surprise history (actual figure against forecast), every past release, and above all the market impact analysis.
Correlation
Strength of the link between the release and your asset: strong, moderate or weak. The relation can be direct or inverse.
Data points
Number of past releases the measure is based on.
Average move
Average move of your asset after the release.
Directional accuracy
Share of releases after which the asset moved in the expected direction.
Theoretical impact and actual move
In blue, the expected impact score of each release; in green or red, what the price actually did afterwards.
Asset Seasonality shows the asset's average monthly performance over several years, its month-by-month heatmap and the overlay of years. Economic Seasonality does the same for economic indicators: their average value month by month, and the overlay of years.
For a stock: each quarterly report with earnings per share (EPS) and revenue against analyst estimates, the quarterly trend, forward estimates and financial ratios. EPS above expectations is a "beat", below is a "miss". The Dividends tab gives the ex-dividend date (you must hold the stock before it), the payment date and the yield.
The main US stocks, live. Clicking a row opens its details (profile, 30-day chart, key statistics). The heatmap view shows the market at a glance: green up, red down, size by market capitalisation.
The simulator keeps your trades as they happened and changes one thing only: the size of your positions. Win rate and reward-to-risk therefore do not move; what changes the result is how you size those trades.
A starting risk, a multiplier applied after a loss, another after a win, and a period after which risk returns to its starting value: per session, day, week or month.
Drawdown
A maximum drawdown per period (session, day, week or month), measured from the period's highest balance. Once exceeded, the next trades are skipped until the next period. Original sizes are kept: this rule cuts, it does not resize.
From 30 closed trades, the simulator adds a Monte Carlo run on the chosen rule: it draws the simulation's gains at random, with replacement, thousands of times, and derives the probability of ruin and of losing 25% and 50% of the account. Below 30 trades it does not show it: the figures would not be reliable.
Account at zero: if the rule wipes out the account, the simulator says so with the date, and does not simulate the following trades.
Resized positions: risk is brought exactly to the setting only for positions whose opening stop is known. The others are brought to the account's average risk and keep their original spread; the screen shows the share concerned.
Insufficient data: without an average RR or an initial deposit, positions cannot be resized. The history is then shown as is.
Chapter 8
Trading terminal
Send an order to one or several accounts, the lot sized on your risk, then hand stops, targets and guards over to Kara's risk engine.
Plan: the terminal is included in the Copier and Complete plans, and in the free trial.
Accounts: MetaTrader linked with the master password, cTrader or Rithmic. An account linked read-only (investor password) or with no terminal connected refuses orders, and the terminal tells you why.
Market goes at the market price; Normal places an order at a price; Range splits the entry into several orders between two prices, from 2 to 100 orders.
4
Set the order type (Market, Limit or Stop-Limit), the stop and the take-profit.
5
Choose the accounts.
One account, several, or All my active accounts.
6
Set the risk.
In percent or in currency. Choose whether it is computed on the Balance or on the Latent Capital (open positions included), and whether commissions are deducted.
7
Read the summary, then Send order.
For each account: lots, risk, expected reward and commissions.
Three special cases
Broker minimum lot
If the computed lot is smaller than the broker's minimum, the terminal warns you account by account: the order can go, but at the minimum lot, so with a higher real risk than requested. You confirm or cancel.
Reference price
If the asset has no quote in Kara, the terminal asks for a reference price. It is only used to size the position; the order still goes at market.
Trigger level
For a stop order, the price that fires the market order. It is also the price used to compute the lot.
Before sending, the terminal measures what the order adds to what you already hold:
Correlation index
Share of open lots carried by a symbol that shares a currency with the order being prepared.
Hedging index
Share of open lots that cancel each other out: opposite positions on the same symbol.
All-positions risk
Total loss if every stop were hit, open positions and the order being prepared included. Positions without a stop, or in a currency other than the account's, are not counted; the screen says how many.
Each send gets a status: Queued, Sent, Filled, Rejected (with the reason given by the broker) or No ack. The page is then split into three tabs: Positions, History and Pending orders. Close all closes every open position of the accounts concerned, after confirmation.
In Pending orders, orders fall into two groups: those placed at the broker, which you can edit or cancel, and those held by the risk engine, waiting for their conditions to go.
Advanced risk management sets what Kara's server does with your positions, without you having to stay in front of the screen. It is switched on and off with a toggle, and its rules apply to all your accounts: it is set up once, not account by account. Its settings are split into five tabs: Entry, Position, Exits, Discipline and Journal.
At the heart of the engine are virtual stops and targets: the level is kept by Kara's server, not at the broker. The engine watches the price and closes the position when it is hit, even with your computer off.
Entry
Conditional entry
The order is handed to the engine, which only sends it once its conditions are met, before an expiry date. If the price feed is down, the order waits for it to come back.
Spread guard
The entry waits for the bid-ask spread to fall back under the set threshold.
Orderflow condition
The entry waits for a flow condition. It is only offered on assets for which Kara receives order-flow data.
Position
Trailing SL
A trailing stop, with four logics: Fixed distance, Steps (R), Time or Volatility.
Break-even
The stop moved to the entry price once a given gain is reached.
Partial TP
Part of the position closed at one or several levels.
Trailing TP
A target that extends: On approach of the level, with Time, or with Volatility.
Exits
Time-stop
The position closed after a given duration.
Scheduled close
Closing at a set time, every day or on Fridays only.
Discipline
Max loss per day
In currency or in percent.
Max trades per day
Beyond it, no more entries.
Anti-tilt
A forced pause after a losing streak.
News guard
Blocks entries, or moves positions to break-even, in a window before and after each high-impact release.
On breach
Lock blocks new entries; Lock + close all also closes open positions.
A locked account shows the reason and the end time. While it is locked, the terminal refuses orders (daily guard active). To unlock it earlier, turn the guard off.
Engine journal
Every action of the engine is written there: break-even set, trailing stop moved, partial exit, conditional entry triggered, expired or refused, guard triggered, close on virtual stop or target, scheduled close. The journal shows all your accounts, or only the ticket's accounts.
On each position, small tags sum up what the engine holds on it: virtual SL and TP armed, BE applied, TP1, TP2… for partial exits, EXT when the target was extended, CLOSE when a close is in progress.
Chapter 9
Position copier
Replicate a master account's positions onto your follower accounts, with a size of their own for each, prop-firm protections and limits that stop copying at the right moment.
You trade a master account. Your follower accounts reproduce its positions, each with its own size and its own limits. The copier replicates your own orders between your own accounts: it never copies another trader's positions.
Plans: Copier or Complete, and the free trial.
Accounts: MetaTrader linked with the master password, cTrader or Rithmic, as master or follower. Crypto accounts are not copied.
Mixing platforms: the master and its followers do not have to be on the same platform; a MetaTrader master can, for instance, feed a Rithmic follower.
The follower's Copy settings say how this account reproduces the master's positions. They are split into three tabs: Risk, Prop firm and Discipline.
Risk type
Fixed lots: always the same size. Balance multiplier: size proportional to the follower's balance. Lots multiplier: the master's lots multiplied by a coefficient. Fixed % risk: a percentage of the follower's balance, computed from the stop.
Copy Stop Loss, Copy Take Profit
Whether to reuse the master's stop and target.
Copy Pending Orders
Also reproduce pending orders.
Maximum lots
A size cap. A position above it is opened at the maximum minus 0.1 lot.
Hedging Restricted
Forbids opposite positions on the same symbol, for prop firms that refuse hedging.
Restriction window
A window during which the follower opens and closes no position.
Max Loss Daily
Stops copying 0.1% before the maximum daily loss allowed. Trailing makes it follow the balance.
Psychology Management
Max Loss
A maximum loss, as a percentage or a number of losing trades, per session, day or week.
Max Profit
A maximum gain, on the same principle: a day that is made stops.
Max Risk Per Trade
The highest risk accepted for a copied position.
Strategy
None, or Martingale: an initial risk adjusted after each loss or each gain, and reset after a streak.
E.Restriction Management
What the follower does with a position left open during a restriction: Do Nothing, Ignore if SL, Ignore if TP, or Take After Restriction to take it once the restriction lifts.
The master account's settings apply to all its copies.
Risk Management
Any master position opened without a stop or a target gets both: the stop at the chosen risk (as a percentage of balance), the target at the chosen reward-to-risk ratio.
Propfirms Protection
Turns on the protections below, as you choose: Only Eco.News, Profit Target & Daily Loss, or Everything.
Eco.News Restriction
Closes your positions on the master a chosen number of minutes before and after each high-impact economic release. Followers keep theirs during the window, then follow the master again.
Profit.T / Daily.L
Closes your positions when the profit target is reached, or 0.1% before the maximum daily loss.
Min. Trad.Day Farmer
On days without any trade, opens a 0.01-lot position at 21:30 UTC and closes it after the chosen delay: enough to count a trading day for firms that require a minimum.
Take restricted positions
Replicates on the followers, anyway, the positions blocked by these restrictions.
Pausing the master account pauses all its active followers. Start resumes them.
Pausing a follower stops it alone, without touching the others.
Changing the master account: either delete everything (settings of the master and of its followers), or replace it with another account and keep all settings. The followers then move to the new master. As a safety check, Kara asks you to type the master's login again.
Disconnecting a follower erases its settings and stops copying to that account.
A follower's Copier log writes, line by line, what the engine sent to that account: symbol, side, lot, price, and the rules that applied. When nothing went out, it says why: an empty list because the master has no more positions, or a copier stopped by a limit.
To be warned when an outage blocks copying (changed password, insufficient margin, stopped terminal), turn on the Copier and accounts topic in your notifications.
Chapter 10
Prop firms and challenges
Compare firms and their rules, track the progress of your challenges, and measure what they really earn you, fees included.
Profile and Social > Propfirms / Brokers. Two tabs, Propfirms and Brokers, filterable by category (Forex / CFD, Futures), platform, model (1, 2 or 3 steps, instant) and rating.
Cost per $
What you pay for $1 of funded capital: sum of prices divided by sum of sizes of the 2-step accounts. The lower, the cheaper the funding.
Reliability
Regulation and jurisdiction, seniority, reviews, transparency.
Max allocation, max split, payout
The maximum capital, your share of the profits, and the payout rhythm.
Brokers
Regulators, minimum deposit, spread from, commission and maximum leverage.
A firm's page details each account (size, model, price, phase targets, daily loss, drawdown and its type — static, trailing or end of day —, split, fee refund) and its rules: news trading, weekend holding, EAs and robots, copy trading, scaling plan, minimum days, time limit, consistency rule. Every page cites its sources and its verification date.
Automated trading: three uses
A firm can allow one use and forbid another. Kara tells them apart, with a level for each: Allowed, With conditions, Forbidden or To confirm.
Terminal (trade-manager EA)
You decide, a program places and manages the order: the trading terminal and its risk engine.
Copier (between your accounts)
Replicating your own positions from one account to another: the copier. Copying a third party's account is forbidden everywhere.
When adding a MetaTrader account, give the firm, the phase and the challenge size; Kara often recognises the firm from the broker.
2
Trading Journal > Challenges tab > Tracking, then Track this challenge on the account.
3
Check the pre-filled rules.
Account size, target, maximum daily loss, maximum total loss, drawdown type (static, trailing on equity, trailing at end of day), minimum trading days and start date. An empty field means the firm has no such rule.
4
Save.
The challenge card shows the stage (Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3 or Funded), the status (In progress, Target reached or Limit breached) and four gauges:
The Profitability tab keeps count of what prop firms cost you and earn you. Record each entry: challenge, reset, activation, other fees, payout or refund, with the firm, the account, the amount and the currency. The firm's catalogue price is offered when Kara knows it.
Spent, Received, Net profit and Return (the return on what you spent), in total and by firm.
Withdrawals found on your prop firm accounts: a withdrawal from a funded account is usually a payout. Record as payout adds it in one click.
Export CSV for your bookkeeping.
Chapter 11
Automated strategies
Build a strategy from blocks, in code or with Kara AI, put it to the test on real data, optimise it without overfitting, then connect it to an account with its guards.
The workshop: the strategy is assembled from blocks, whose code is generated, or imported from a file. Each save creates a version.
Simulation
Replays a version bar by bar on real data, fees included, then puts it through statistical tests.
Optimization
Sweeps the settings and keeps the centre of the largest plateau, never the peak.
Execution
Connects a frozen version to a trading account, with guards that belong to the account.
A Documentation page, in the same section, describes the language of coded strategies. Example strategies are offered to get started: open one, read it, change it.
What applies to the whole strategy: the traded assets (the same logic applies to each, with its own position), the timeframe, and the decision moment: at the close of each bar, or on every quote.
Stages
One or several columns of conditions. With two stages, the first must have happened before the second.
Execution
What happens: entry, exit, trailing stop, break-even. An execution block acts once per signal, never on every bar where the signal stays true.
Condition blocks come in families: indicators (moving-average cross, RSI, MACD, stochastic, Bollinger, trend strength, Supertrend, volatility, indicator comparison), price action (structure trend and break, liquidity sweep, FVG imbalance, order block, retracement, candle pattern), key levels (previous high or low, time range, range breakout, price level) and context (session, days of the week, position, floating gain, time in position).
Confluence
Between two columns, it combines several signals: "2 of 3" lets the signal through as soon as two inputs are true at the same time. Giving a block a second input creates one.
Validity
An event (a cross, a break) lasts one bar. Its validity keeps it true for a few bars, long enough for the next stage to happen.
Optimisable parameter
A setting marked ◆ in a block's advanced settings. It is what optimisation will vary: with no declared parameter, there is nothing to optimise.
To link two blocks, drag from an output port, or click it and then the target; drop in empty space to create the next block. The builder's shortcuts are in the appendix.
In Code file mode, drop a TypeScript file of 200 KB at most. It default-exports defineStrategy({ name, params, indicators, onBar, onTick? }): indicators come from ind (ema, rsi, atr, bollinger…), orders from ctx (buy, sell, exit, moveStop).
A strategy can declare secondary assets: they are loaded over the same period, aligned bar by bar on the main asset, and their positions held on the same account. The report merges everything, then shows each asset separately.
The Kara AI button opens an assistant that builds the strategy from your description, in your own words: it places the blocks, links them and checks that it is ready to simulate. Every setting stays editable by hand, and each change by the assistant can be undone in one click.
Critical review asks it for a demanding quant's opinion: the hypothesis the strategy plays, the risks of over-optimisation given your edits and your simulations, the tests to run, and a verdict.
Each exchange is paid in compute tokens, at the model's real cost. A daily limit applies.
The assistant can be wrong: review the strategy and simulate it before trading. Nothing it says is investment advice.
A simulation replays one precise configuration, bar by bar, on real data and fees included. It is the moment of truth for a setting, not the search for the best one. Before running, set:
Account
Starting capital, leverage and maintenance margin. Leverage caps the notional; below the maintenance margin, the position is liquidated.
Sizing
Fixed units, fraction of capital, fixed risk at the stop, fractional Kelly or volatility targeting. Fixed risk at the stop makes the strategy independent of price and capital.
Execution
What the simulator assumes when OHLC does not tell everything: when stop and target are both touched in the same bar, the cautious policy keeps the stop. It is the only one that does not manufacture profit.
Precision
At candle level, execution reads OHLC. At tick level, it reads the main asset's real quotes: the order of prices decides, and the spread paid is the market's at that moment. Forex, metals and indices have their quotes; crypto only has its trades, over a few weeks per run.
Analyses
Quick: split, Monte Carlo, robustness, costs and chance. Full: the same plus walk-forward and cross-validation, much longer.
The report's tests
In-sample / out-of-sample
The period is cut in two: the strategy is judged on the first part, then replayed on the second, which it has never seen. A setting that does not hold out of sample does not hold.
Walk-forward
A series of windows: on each, the best settings are chosen on the past, then replayed on the following period. The stitched curve of those periods is the only honest curve in the report.
Combinatorial cross-validation
Every combination of training and test groups, with an embargo between them. It gives the probability of overfitting: below 0.2, the selection is reliable; above 0.5, the in-sample ranking predicts nothing.
Confidence intervals
Each metric recomputed a thousand times on block resamples. If the lower bound of the Sharpe is below zero, the result is compatible with no edge at all.
Robustness
Each parameter shifted around its value. A real edge is a plateau; an isolated peak is overfitting.
Cost sensitivity
The strategy replayed at 0.5×, 1×, 2× and 3× the fees. If the edge dies at 2×, it does not exist: real costs always exceed the backtest's.
Monte Carlo
The order of trades shuffled thousands of times, trades skipped at random. The 95th-percentile drawdown is the one to plan for, not the backtest's.
Desynchronisation
Candles re-cut at other times: same prices, different slicing. A robust edge survives; a timing artefact does not.
Against chance
Hundreds of random strategies, with as many trades and as much time in position. Below the 95th percentile, nothing distinguishes yours from a coin toss.
Prop firm
The strategy replayed in Monte Carlo under a challenge's rules (target, daily loss, drawdown, time limits, then funded account): the probability of each stage, and which rule each failure comes from.
Optimisation varies the declared parameters and measures each combination. It keeps the centre of the largest plateau, never the best peak: a setting that survives its neighbours has a chance of surviving the future.
Search method
Grid: try everything, exact but expensive. Random: a sample of the space. Guided: a coarse sweep, then tightened around what stands out. Bayesian (TPE) and differential evolution learn from previous trials.
Objective
The measure being maximised: Sharpe favours regularity, profit factor tolerates irregularity, PnL only looks at the finish.
Minimum trades
A setting that does not reach enough is not ranked.
The Execution page connects a frozen version of a strategy to an account and an asset. You need:
a current version that compiles;
a MetaTrader account linked through a Kara terminal with the master password, or a Rithmic account;
a plan that includes the copier (Copier or Complete): execution goes through the same mechanism.
You then set the account guards, which the strategy has to obey whatever its code:
Risk multiplier
From 0.1 to 3. At 2, gains and losses double.
Maximum daily loss
Once reached, it pauses the strategy.
Maximum drawdown
Once reached, it stops the strategy. 15% by default.
Simultaneous positions
From 1 to 50.
Short selling
Off by default: the strategy only takes long positions until you allow it.
On stop
Whether to close open positions when the strategy stops.
Up to 20 active connections; a given strategy connects only once to a given account and asset.
Pause, resume and stop are driven from the page, and each action is logged. Last heartbeat shows when the engine last confirmed it was following the connection.
If the account can no longer trade for a reason only you can fix (archived account, read-only link), the strategy pauses and resumes only if you restart it. If it is temporary (broker briefly refusing trading), it waits and resumes on its own.
Free: simulations and analyses on Kara's servers, in a shared queue with limited slots.
Paid, in tokens: optimisation and the Kara AI assistant.
One token = one second of one CPU core. When you send a run, an increased reservation is taken from your balance; at the end, only the time actually measured is charged and the surplus comes back. Nothing starts if the balance does not cover the reservation.
Amount excl. VAT
Volume bonus
Tokens
€10
—
240,000
€25
+10%
660,000
€50
+20%
1,440,000
€100
+30%
3,120,000
€250
+40%
8,400,000
A purchase ranges from €10 to €500 excluding VAT; applicable VAT is added on the invoice. Payment uses the card saved in your settings. Before each run, Kara shows its estimated cost and the share of your balance it represents.
You can also connect your own compute servers, up to five: an agent installed on the machine connects to Kara with its token and fetches your runs, with no port to open. Runs on your servers consume no tokens.
Chapter 12
Leaderboard and ranks
Understand your rank and what moves it up, share a card that anyone can verify, and see where you stand in the anonymous statistics of Kara traders.
Share my card produces an image of your rank and your figures, in three formats: Story, Square and X post. The image carries a verification link: anyone, even without a Kara account, can open the page certifying that these results come straight from your trading accounts.
Copy or Open the link, download the image or share it.
Remove the link disables it: the verification page then says the link is no longer valid.
Profile and Social > Ranking, Ranking tab: members ranked by Kara Score, with their win rate, average RR and accounts. Search a member finds a profile.
Your profile is private by default. Once public, it is visible to every Kara user: photo, banner, bio, social links and trading strategies, which you set in your profile.
Profile and Social > Communities is a directory of trading communities (Discord servers, groups…), verified by the Kara team.
Show as my community: the community's badge appears on your profile.
List my community: permanent invite link, member count, creation date. It goes into review, then becomes verified, refused (with the points to fix) or suspended. While pending, it sits in the unverified communities tab.
Changing the invite link sends it back to review; the old link stays displayed in the meantime.
Chapter 13
Alerts and notifications
Get warned about a price, a condition on a drawing, a challenge limit, a copier outage or a release, wherever you are.
A drawing on the chart can warn you too: give it a condition (touch, break, close beyond, retest…) with the Notification effect. How to do it is in the Chart chapter.
Settings > Profile > Notifications tab, Where to reach you section:
Telegram
A message from the Kara bot on your phone, even with the application closed. Link Telegram, open the link in Telegram and press Start. If the button says the channel is not available on this server yet, it has not been opened yet.
Discord
A private message from the Kara Discord server's bot. First link your Discord account in the Integrations tab, and join the Kara server.
Email
To your Kara account's address.
Send a test checks the active channels. With no channel at all, Kara can only warn you inside the application.
The Integrations tab links your Discord account to Kara. You must be a member of the Kara Discord server: otherwise, Join the Discord server first. Once linked, Discord can serve as a notification channel.
The desktop application updates itself: it downloads the new version in the background, then offers to restart. The Application tab shows the installed version and the update status. If an update fails, the application stays usable and tries again later. The web app is always up to date.
Settings > Subscription: the plan you hold, the number of accounts, the next payment date, and the buttons to change plan or cancel. The change and cancellation rules are in Install and subscribe.
Payment methods: add a card, choose the default one, remove the others. The same card is used for compute token purchases.
Settings > Invoices: every invoice, to open or download.
A tool is picked with Alt plus a letter, with Shift as well for some. The combinations below are the defaults; Set a shortcut, in a tool's menu, changes or adds one. Esc cancels a shortcut being set, Backspace clears it.
With the mouse: drag from an output port to link two blocks, drop in empty space to create the next block, click an input port to choose what feeds it, double-click a link to set it up.
View combining all your accounts, archived and demo included. Each trade is measured within its own account before combining, and a copied position counts once.
Anti-tilt
Risk engine rule that forces a pause after a losing streak.
Break-even (BE)
Stop moved to the entry price: the position can no longer lose, fees and slippage aside.
Master account, follower account
In the copier, the account you trade and the ones that reproduce its positions.
Confluence
In the strategy builder, a block that lets the signal through when n conditions out of m are true at the same time.
CVD
Cumulative Volume Delta: the running sum, over time, of the difference between buy and sell volume.
Delta
Difference between buy and sell volume on a candle or a price level.
DOM
Depth of Market: the order book, with the quantities resting at each price.
Drawdown
A fall from a peak. Realised: on closed positions. Floating: counting losses in progress. At prop firms it can be static (from the starting balance) or trailing (from the highest level reached, on equity or at end of day).
Share of history splits where the best in-sample setting ends below the median out of sample. Below 0.2, the selection is reliable; above 0.5, it predicts nothing.
Profit factor
Gross gains divided by gross losses, in absolute value.
R
The risk taken on a position, used as the unit. A trade that wins twice its risk makes +2 R; a loss at the stop makes −1 R.
Actual RR, intended RR
The reward-to-risk ratio obtained (average gain over average loss), and the one your stops and targets aimed for.
Sharpe, Sortino, Calmar
Return relative to volatility (Sharpe), to downside volatility only (Sortino), or to maximum drawdown (Calmar).
Virtual stop
A stop kept by Kara's server rather than at the broker. The engine closes the position at market when the price reaches it.
Time-stop
Closing a position after a given duration, whatever its result.
TPO
Time Price Opportunity: a profile of the time spent at each price, the basis of Market Profile.
Trailing stop
A stop that moves with the price to protect part of the gain.
VWAP
Volume-weighted average price from an anchor point (session open, or a point you choose for the anchored VWAP).
Walk-forward
Validation over successive windows: tune on the past, replay on the next period, start again.
Win rate
Share of winning trades. On its own it says nothing: a 30% win rate can be profitable, an 80% one losing.