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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallA dropped connection does not tell you whether an exchange canceled your resting orders, and canceling orders does not necessarily close an open position. After my own algo setup left me uncertain about what was still active, I built a separate “brake layer” to stop new order generation when the connection looked unhealthy and to require state reconciliation before trading resumed. That is a safeguard in my setup, not a universal fix or a claim that every broker handles disconnects the same way.
What a disconnect does—and does not—tell you
Your bot losing its connection is not proof that the broker or exchange canceled its orders, nor that it closed a position. The venue’s API behavior matters. For example, Kraken documents a timer that cancels client orders when it expires; Cboe’s indexed Titanium U.S. Secure Web API specification describes controls for canceling open orders or quotes and blocking new orders. These are different venue controls, not evidence of a universal disconnect rule.
There are three separate things to check: whether the client connection is healthy, which resting orders the venue acknowledges, and what positions the account actually holds. Local memory can be stale during an outage. On reconnect, retrieve and reconcile authoritative broker or venue state before permitting the strategy to submit orders again.
Orders are not positions
Canceling a resting order removes an instruction that has not fully executed; it does not by itself unwind a position created by earlier fills. A kill switch may stop new orders or cancel open orders without liquidating holdings. If your concern is an open position, check the account’s position state and the venue’s supported position-management actions separately. The right response depends on the broker, instrument, and account.
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What my brake layer does
I treat the brake as an independent gate between the strategy and order submission, rather than as a promise that the venue will clean up every risk. In my setup, it watches a defined health signal, blocks new order generation when that signal is stale, and keeps trading paused after reconnect until the local view has been reconciled with broker-acknowledged orders and account positions. These are details of my design, not documented behavior of a particular venue.
Connection health
A live socket alone is not enough to establish that the whole trading path is healthy. A useful health signal should reflect whether the expected heartbeat or other venue response is arriving within the limits your system defines. The failure threshold must be explicit: otherwise a delayed message, an expired session, and a truly lost connection can be handled inconsistently.
Order submission gate
When the health check fails, the brake should prevent the strategy from creating or sending fresh orders. Whether it also requests cancellation of existing orders is a separate, venue-specific decision. The client should record the result of each request and treat an unconfirmed cancellation as unresolved—not silently assume that the order disappeared.
Reconnect and state reconciliation
After reconnect, do not simply restart the strategy using its pre-outage cache. Query the venue for open orders and positions, account for any fills that occurred while the client was offline, and update local state. Resume only when the strategy’s view and the venue’s acknowledged state agree sufficiently for the intended operation. This pattern follows from the gap between client-side connection state and venue-side order state; the cited venue documentation does not prescribe one specific retail architecture.
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| Control | Trigger and location | Documented effect | Important qualification |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kraken “Cancel on Disconnect” | A client-set timer expires if the client does not refresh it; it is a Kraken API mechanism. | Client orders are canceled when the timer expires. | Kraken recommends a 60-second timeout refreshed every 15–30 seconds. Those settings are Kraken-specific, not universal. The documentation describes order cancellation, not position liquidation. Kraken also warns that scheduled matching-engine maintenance can cause the timer to cancel orders when the engine returns; it recommends disabling the timer before such maintenance. Kraken API: Cancel on Disconnect. |
| Cboe Titanium U.S. Secure Web API port controls | Controls are associated with the exchange port; the indexed specification describes operator-initiated controls. | Describes canceling open orders or quotes, and a kill switch that cancels and blocks new orders. | The indexed specification says blocking does not persist across trading segments or dates and describes reset restrictions. Confirm the current specification and its reset behavior directly before relying on parameters. The documented controls should not be assumed to close positions. Cboe Titanium U.S. Secure Web API specification. |
The comparison is deliberately limited to the cited documentation. It does not establish how other brokers or exchanges behave, or whether their controls cover positions, quotes, new-order entry, or planned maintenance in the same way.
What to verify before relying on a brake
- Failure trigger: Define what counts as a missed heartbeat, delayed acknowledgment, session expiry, or other unhealthy state.
- Scope of action: Decide whether the brake only blocks new orders, also requests cancellation of resting orders, or uses a venue-side control. Do not treat these as equivalent outcomes.
- Acknowledgments: Track whether cancellation requests were accepted and confirmed. A request sent is not the same as an order canceled.
- Position state: Reconcile actual holdings independently of open-order status, especially where partial fills may have occurred during a disconnect.
- Recovery gate: Require a deliberate state reconciliation before resuming strategy activity rather than automatically restarting from stale local state.
- Maintenance behavior: Establish how the venue’s timer or control behaves during planned maintenance and what must be disabled, reset, or re-enabled.
- Failure testing: Exercise relevant failure and recovery paths in a safe test environment, including delayed acknowledgments, partial fills, session expiry, restart with stale state, and rejected cancellation requests. These are test cases to consider, not tests claimed here.
Testing and regulatory scope
Risk controls are not a substitute for testing or ongoing oversight. FINRA’s algorithmic-trading guidance recommends a holistic risk assessment, attention to software development and implementation, pre-production testing and validation, post-deployment review, and communication between compliance and development teams. It also cautions that “A reasonable supervision and control program may not prevent every possible failure.” This guidance addresses FINRA member firms; it is not a rule that every individual trader’s personal script must use a particular design. FINRA: Algorithmic Trading.
In the United States, SEC Rule 15c3-5 applies to broker-dealers with market access, not automatically to every individual trader’s bot. Covered broker-dealers have specified market-access control duties, including controls designed to prevent orders above preset credit or capital thresholds and orders that appear erroneous. SEC staff guidance also describes direct and exclusive control requirements, with limited circumstances for written allocation of some regulatory controls. SEC: Rule 15c3-5 Small Entity Compliance Guide and SEC staff FAQ: Market Access Rule.
For firms within its scope, the FCA Handbook’s MAR 7A.3 calls for resilient and adequately capacitated systems, trading thresholds and limits, controls to prevent erroneous orders, testing and monitoring, and effective business continuity arrangements. The Handbook page states it was last updated on 1 January 2021; firms should check the current text and their own obligations. FCA Handbook: MAR 7A.3.
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Limits of this approach
A brake layer can limit what a client does when its health checks fail; it cannot guarantee network availability, venue uptime, successful cancellation, accurate local state, or liquidation of an open position. A venue-side disconnect control may add protection, but its trigger, affected orders, reset behavior, and maintenance handling must be understood for that specific API. The exact remedy for a hanging position cannot be specified without knowing the broker, instrument, account, and failure mode.
This is a description of my own control-layer approach, not a verified tool review, performance claim, or trading recommendation. The practical lesson is to separate connection status, acknowledged orders, and account positions—and to avoid resuming order generation until those states have been checked.
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