What is stop level?

What it means

Brokers set this to stop clients placing orders so close to market that they would be triggered by the spread itself. It is expressed in points and can change with conditions — some brokers widen it during news, which means an order that was legal a minute ago is rejected now.

Why it matters

This single setting quietly breaks more automated systems than any other. A strategy that calculates a valid stop of $1.20 on gold will have every order rejected if the broker requires $2.00 of distance, and MetaTrader reports it as a generic invalid stops error rather than explaining the cause. If your EA opened positions but never attached protection, this is the first thing to check.

What this changes in practice

The workaround used by most well-built EAs, including ours, is to open the position with no protection attached and modify it immediately afterwards, because the constraint is often applied differently to a modification than to the original order. If that modification fails, the only safe response is to close the position rather than run it unprotected — which is what our engine does. See invalid stops.