When a lock fires — and when it cannot see

What the close does

1
The account locks
From that moment Tradeus sends it no new entry — see the list further down.
2
Orders that could add to the position are cancelled
On brokers where Tradeus cancels orders (the table below): anything working on an instrument the account is flat in, on the same side as the position, or on the other side and larger than it — that one would reverse the account. A stop or target that protects the position stays until the position is gone, so a close that fails still leaves the trade stopped.
3
Every open position is closed
At market, the way the kill switch closes: Tradeus waits for any order of its own still on its way, reads the account, closes, and reads again until it is flat. Every position goes, including one you opened by hand in the broker's own platform. If the account still reads open — or open the other way, because a stop filled in between — there is a second round.
4
Once flat, the rest of the working orders are cancelled
Again only where Tradeus cancels orders, and the account is read once more afterwards. An order that filled in that gap is closed in turn.
5
Until it is confirmed, Tradeus keeps trying
If the broker refuses or does not confirm any part of it, the account's row on Account lock says the close is not finished, and Tradeus retries every few seconds — also after the lock has ended — until the account reads flat, and on a broker where it cancels orders, with nothing left working. Turning the lock off stops the retry: from that moment the account is yours to close.

Working orders, broker by broker

Tradovate

Cancelled — the orders that could add to the position before the close, every other working order once the account is flat.

Capital.com

Not cancelled. A stop or target attached to the position closes with it; an order resting on its own stays. Check for resting orders after a lock.

MetaTrader 5

Not cancelled. A stop or target attached to the position closes with it; a pending order resting on its own stays. Check for resting orders after a lock.

TradeLocker

Not cancelled yet. A stop, target or entry order resting at the broker may remain after the close. Check for resting orders after a lock.

Rithmic

Not cancelled yet. A stop, target or entry order resting at the broker may remain after the close. Check for resting orders after a lock.

A broker without order routing

Nothing is closed and nothing is cancelled: the lock is a warning only there, and the account's row on Account lock says so.

In a copy group, each account has its own lock

Every follower is measured against its own limits and locks on its own. A leader's lock closes the leader only — its followers are not closed with it, and the copier does not copy that close to them. If a follower should stop at a figure, give it a limit of its own.

While an account is locked

What was open when the limit was reached is closed as described above, on brokers where Tradeus can close positions. Where it cannot, the Account lock page says the lock is a warning only on that broker.
New entries for that account are not sent — from a strategy's alerts and from the copier alike — and each refusal is written into the event log with the lock as its reason.
Closing is not blocked: by hand, with Flatten on the account's row, with Flatten all or with an exit alert, you can always get flat. A plain buy or sell alert is held while the account is locked, even one that would only reduce the position.
Optionally, anything that does get opened while locked is closed again automatically.

The exclamation mark on Account lock

A limit can only be enforced if Tradeus can see the account. When a lock is armed but its broker is not connected, the protection is off and nothing on the screen would otherwise say so — the limits still look set.

And when the numbers are not the same money

There is a second way a lock stops being able to see. Some brokers report an open position's profit in the instrument's currency rather than the account's — a euro account holding a dollar-quoted position gets a euro balance and a dollar profit. Adding them would produce a third number that is neither, and a drawdown limit measured against it would fire early or late by whatever the exchange rate happened to be. Tradeus refuses to measure that instead, and says so in the same place: the lock reads as armed but not protecting until the position is closed.

And when nobody has reported a balance at all

The third way, and the only one where the risk is the lock firing rather than sleeping. A broker can be connected and still not have sent this account's balance yet — Rithmic reads it off a separate data feed that can be down while orders route perfectly well. A missing balance is not a balance of zero, and treating it as one would be the worst possible reading: measured against the session's opening figure it looks like losing the entire account, so every limit you set would trigger at once and the account would be locked and closed out on money nobody lost. Tradeus refuses to measure instead, and says so in the same place as the two cases above.

And when the broker does not report the open position's profit

Rithmic does not report open P&L yet, and a missing figure is not a profit of zero: counting it as one would measure the balance alone and let a running trade go past both limits. So while a position is open on a Rithmic account — or on any account whose broker sent a reading without that figure — the lock does not measure, and the Account lock page shows the account as not protecting right now, with the reason. Once the account is flat, it is measured again.

Armed but not protected

That is what the ! beside Account lock means, and the page names how many accounts are in that state. The fix is on Broker setup: reconnect the broker. Until then, treat those accounts as unprotected.