Set up a risk condition
A risk condition is a market rule that switches your strategy to when it triggers and back to when it clears; you add it on the Risk card.
Steps
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Open the Risk card and add a condition. On the strategy's Settings, find the Risk card — if it isn't shown yet, select Risk beside Add — and select Add condition. The condition builder opens: "Configure a market condition that flips this strategy to its Risk-Off allocation."
Demo data The Risk card with no condition yet: under When, the full-width Add condition key; under Then, Risk-Off, which switches on when a condition fires. -
Choose the signal. Pick what the rule watches from the Signal menu. A template such as VIX fills the whole rule in; Single series and Double series, under Custom, start blank — see Which signals can a condition watch?
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Set the thresholds. The builder writes the rule as sentences, and every underlined value opens its own control. On a Single series rule set both halves: the Risk-Off comparison that switches the strategy out and the Risk-On comparison that brings it back. Keeping the two apart stops a series that hovers around one level from flipping the strategy again and again (whipsaw). The last sentence holds the Confirmation delay (weeks) and Auto-rebalance. Select Save condition, or Cancel to close without saving.
SignalCBOE volatility index level. Risk-Off when volatility exceeds the threshold.
Go Risk-Off when the of .
Back to Risk-On when it .
When the rule flips, switch .
Demo data The condition builder with the VIX template: the Signal menu reads VIX, the template's description sits under it, and the rule is written as sentences — go Risk-Off when the value of the CBOE Volatility Index is above 25, back to Risk-On when it is below 20, and when the rule flips, switch immediately without rebalancing. -
Choose how the strategy invests in Risk-Off. On the Allocation card, the Risk-Off key now carries a red mark and In Risk-Off: reads Setup required. Select Risk-Off, then Choose a method, and pick the method the strategy uses while it is in Risk-Off. Until you do, the backtest cannot run. Risk-Off profiles commonly hold a lower invested portion.
Demo data The Allocation card open on Risk-Off with no method yet: Choose a method, marked as required, beside Required: risk conditions are active; under it, the Risk-On method. -
Save and run it again. Select Save in the header; the same button then reads Backtest — select it. Until the new run finishes, the previous result stays on screen as Needs re-run.
Demo data The Needs re-run chip: the result on screen is the previous run, dimmed, because a setting changed or a new market day arrived since it was computed.
Done. The Risk card reads your rule under When, with edit and remove actions beside it, and the new backtest switches between Risk-On and Risk-Off each time it triggers; the Regime timeline on Performance Metrics shows when the strategy was in each.
Which signals can a condition watch?
The Signal menu groups its templates under Volatility, Yield curve, Inflation and S&P 500; each fills the rule in for you. Under Custom, Single series reads one instrument's indicator against two thresholds, and Double series compares two series directly, with no thresholds. The Quantitative regimes group lists Hidden regimes (Markov), Clustering and, on a Combined, Strategy's own performance: rules that decide from a model, with their own settings in place of the indicator, operator and thresholds.
The template's description appears under the menu, with " (modified)" after it once you change what it set; the reset button beside the menu puts it back as it ships.
In a series rule, the instrument opens the instrument search, and the measure ("value", "200-day moving average") opens the Indicator — Raw price, Simple moving average, Percent change or Average momentum — with a Period field when the indicator reads over a window. Each comparison opens its operator; each number opens its field. For the five rule shapes side by side, see Condition types.
What do Confirmation delay and Auto-rebalance do?
They are the two values of the last sentence, "When the rule flips, switch immediately without rebalancing." The Confirmation delay (weeks) — "0 = act immediately.", from 0 to 12 weeks — waits that many weeks of confirmation before the strategy switches. Auto-rebalance — "Trigger a rebalance when the condition flips." — makes a flip trigger an extra rebalance right away instead of waiting for the next scheduled one. How a flip reaches your holdings: Auto-rebalance on flip; the trade-off each setting makes: When risk management changes a strategy.
Can a strategy have two conditions?
Yes. Once the first is saved, select Add second condition on the Risk card and build it the same way. The card joins the two with a divider reading "Or": either one firing is enough to switch the strategy to Risk-Off.
A risk condition acts on the whole strategy. Take profit and stop loss act on one position at a time, and they are separate rules on Position exits — see Position exits.
Which values does each indicator accept?
| Indicator | Period | Thresholds |
|---|---|---|
| Raw price | — | from −1,000 to 1,000 |
| Simple moving average | 22, 60, 200 or 252 days | from −1,000 to 1,000 |
| Percent change | 1, 3, 6 or 12 months | from −1,000% to 1,000% |
| Average momentum | — | from −1,000% to 1,000% |
The Confirmation delay (weeks) takes a whole number from 0 to 12: 0 acts immediately, 12 waits three months of confirmation before the strategy switches. A value out of its range turns red with a message naming the range — "Confirmation delay must be between 0 and 12 weeks.", for example — and Save condition stays unavailable until you correct it. An empty Period — of a moving average or a percent change — reads "Enter a value."; an empty instrument reads "choose an instrument", with "Pick an instrument." under it. The Quantitative regimes rules have their own settings and ranges, on their own pages.
UPDATED 2026-10-06REVIEWED 2026-10-06