Bracket & Cover Orders for Every Broker

An AutoTrader bracket order (AT_BO) is an order with a target and a stop-loss attached to it. An AutoTrader cover order (AT_CO) is the same thing with a stop-loss only, and no target.

They do the job your broker’s bracket and cover orders do — but they work on every broker we support. Your entry is sent to the broker as an ordinary intraday order, and AutoTrader Web watches the price and closes the position for you when your level is reached. Brokers that do not offer bracket orders, or whose version keeps failing, are exactly why this exists.

Try it

Drag the price and watch what happens to the stop-loss. The numbers behave exactly as they will on a real order.

The thing worth noticing: when the price falls back, the stop-loss does not. It only ever moves in your favour, one step at a time.

Why your broker may not offer a bracket order

If you came here looking for the bracket order in your broker’s platform and could not find it, you are not doing anything wrong. Many Indian brokers withdrew bracket orders in 2020 and never brought them back. Others still offer them, but only in some segments, only on some contracts, or only in their own app and not through the interface we connect to.

Two things happened at once.

The order type had a real flaw. A broker’s bracket order works by parking two live orders at the exchange — your target and your stop-loss — and cancelling one when the other fills. In a fast move, the price can trade at both levels before that cancellation goes through, so both fill. Instead of being flat, you are left holding a fresh position in the opposite direction that you never asked for, sometimes minutes before the close. That is the reason brokers gave when they switched the order type off.

The margin advantage disappeared. Bracket orders used to come with extra intraday leverage, and that was most of their appeal. A change in margin rules in 2020 removed the difference, so the order type kept its risk and lost its reward.

How ours avoids that specific problem

An AutoTrader bracket order does not park anything at the exchange. We watch the price and send one closing order when a level is reached. There is no second resting order that could fill behind your back — so the failure that made brokers withdraw the order type cannot happen here. If one move passes both your target and your stop-loss, we treat it as the stop-loss, because that is the safer reading for you.

What we cannot remove is the market risk underneath: a price that gaps past your level still exits at a worse price, and no bracket order from anyone changes that. That is point 1 in Four things to know, and it is worth reading before you place your first one.

Which brokers can I use this on?

All of them. An AutoTrader bracket or cover order works on every broker we support, because your entry reaches the broker as an ordinary intraday order — the one thing every broker accepts.

It is most useful where your broker’s own version is missing. Going by what each broker’s interface accepts, there is no bracket order available on Zerodha, Upstox, Groww, Motilal Oswal, Choice or Sharekhan, and no cover order on Angel One, Groww, Motilal Oswal, Choice or Sharekhan. AT_BO and AT_CO work on every one of them.

Where your broker does offer one — Fyers, Dhan, Kotak, Nuvama, AliceBlue, Mastertrust, SAS Online and the brokers on the Symphony XTS platform — ours is still worth using when you want a trailing stop that behaves the same everywhere, when you want to change your levels after placing, or when you trade several brokers and want one set of rules across all of them.

Broker positions change, and the detail is kept up to date on the broker API comparison.

Target, stop-loss and trailing, in plain words

You give three numbers, and each one is rupees away from your entry price — not a price.

You set	What it means	On a buy filled at ₹100
Target	How much profit closes the trade	Target 10 closes at ₹110
Stop-loss	How much loss closes the trade	Stop-loss 10 closes at ₹90
Trailing step	How far the stop moves each time the price advances by that much	Trailing 2 moves the stop up ₹2 at a time

If you are selling, everything mirrors: the target is below your entry and the stop-loss is above it.

For an option, these are rupees on the option premium — the thing you are actually buying and selling — not on the index or the stock behind it.

How the trailing stop-loss moves

The stop-loss keeps the same distance behind the best price you have seen, and it moves in whole steps. Buy at ₹100 with a stop-loss of 10 and a trailing step of 2:

Best price so far	Your stop-loss
₹100	₹90
₹101	₹90 — not a full step yet
₹102	₹92
₹103	₹92
₹104	₹94

At ₹101 the stop has not moved, because the price has not yet gained a full ₹2 step. That is deliberate, and it is how a bracket order’s trailing stop works.

The trailing step needs a stop-loss with it. On its own, a trailing value cannot say how far behind the price your stop should sit, so an order with a trailing step and no stop-loss is refused before it is placed. Send both together.

Four things to know before you use it

These are stated in the one-time agreement you accept before your first AutoTrader bracket order, and they are worth reading here too.

1. A stop-loss decides when we try to exit. It does not decide the price you get. This is the most important one, and it is true of every stop-loss, ours and your broker’s alike. If the price jumps straight past your level — on a sudden move, on news, or at the open — the exit is placed at the price available at that moment, which can be far worse than your level. Your actual loss can be much bigger than the stop-loss you set, and there is no limit on how much bigger. In the same way, a fast move can touch your target and come straight back before the exit reaches the exchange. And if a circuit limit or a trading halt applies, or there is simply no buyer or seller, the exit cannot happen at all and your position stays open. A trailing stop-loss does not change any of this: it moves the level we act on, it does not lock in profit. Please size your positions on what you can afford to lose, not on your stop-loss.

2. It does not give you extra margin. Some brokers give higher intraday margin on their own bracket orders. Ours cannot, because your entry is a normal intraday order. What you get is a target, a stop-loss and a trailing stop that work everywhere — not extra leverage.

3. It is intraday, and it closes itself. An AutoTrader bracket or cover order is squared off automatically a short while before the market closes for that segment. If you wanted to hold overnight, this is the wrong order type. The exact square-off time is shown on the order window before you place it. That square-off is an ordinary exit order, so it can fail for the same reasons as any other.

4. Your levels are watched by AutoTrader Web, not parked at the exchange. Your target and stop-loss are not resting orders sitting at the exchange waiting to trigger. We watch the price and send the closing order when your level is reached. In normal conditions this is what you want — it is what lets the same order work on every broker, and what lets you change your levels at any time. But it means your protection depends on our service and your broker’s connection being up. If we cannot watch the price, we tell you rather than closing your position for you, so you can act yourself.

Placing one

From the order window

1. Open Trading → Portfolio, then the Trade tab.
2. In Variety, pick AT_BO or AT_CO from the AutoTrader row. The row underneath tells you which engine runs the order you have selected.
3. The first time, you are asked to agree to a short set of terms. You get an email with a link; open it, agree once, and you never see it again.
4. Fill in Target, Stop-loss and, if you want it, Trailing stoploss. Each box says it takes rupees away from your entry price, and shows you the price each one works out to.
5. Place the order as usual.

The product is set to intraday and the validity to day, because that is what this order type is.

From your code

There are two new functions, one for each type. They sit next to the existing bracket and cover functions and do not change them.

# AutoTrader bracket order: target 5, stop-loss 2.5, trailing step 1
response = autotrader.place_autotrader_bracket_order( \
	'ACC_NICK_NAME', '<exchange>', 'SBIN', 'BUY', 'LIMIT', \
	10, 180.5, 0.0, 5, 2.5, 1)

# AutoTrader cover order: stop-loss 2.5, no target
response = autotrader.place_autotrader_cover_order( \
	'ACC_NICK_NAME', '<exchange>', 'SBIN', 'BUY', 'LIMIT', \
	10, 180.5, 2.5, 0)

Full reference: Place AutoTrader Bracket Order and Place AutoTrader Cover Order.

From a chart alert

Add variety=AT_BO (or AT_CO) to a TradingView alert, and write the levels with pt:

account=MY_ACCOUNT
variety=AT_BO
exchange=<exchange>
symbol=SBIN
tradetype=BUY
producttype=INTRADAY
quantity=10
target=10pt
stoploss=10pt
trailsl=2pt

An alert like this places the order and attaches the levels in one go. If anything is missing — no target on an AT_BO, a level written as a percentage, or a delivery product — the alert is refused with the reason, before any order reaches your broker.

Changing one that is already running

Open the Positions tab. A position that came from an AutoTrader bracket carries an AT_BO or AT_CO tag; click it and the row opens to show your live target, stop-loss and trailing step.

• Modify — change any level. Here you type the price you want, not a distance, and the box shows you how far that is from your entry. Moving the stop-loss to your entry price, so the trade can no longer lose, is allowed.
• Remove protection — drop the target, the stop-loss, or both. Your position stays open; nothing is closed. The confirmation says exactly what you will be left with. Remove only the target from an AT_BO and it behaves like an AT_CO from then on.
• Exit now — close the position immediately at market.

A trailing stop is never loosened. If you try to move it further away than where it has already trailed to, we keep the tighter one and tell you.

Limits worth knowing

• One at a time per symbol. You can have one AutoTrader bracket running per account and symbol. A second one on the same symbol is refused, and the message names the one already running — two sets of levels fighting over the same position would help nobody.
• It cannot be split. If the quantity you want is above the exchange’s maximum for a single order, the order window normally splits it into several. An AutoTrader bracket cannot be split, because it belongs to one order — so the split control is switched off while AT_BO or AT_CO is selected. Place them as separate orders instead.
• Intraday products only, for the reason in point 2 above.
• Your broker’s own BO and CO are untouched. They are still there in the Variety list, still run by your broker, and still available only where your broker supports them. Nothing you already use changes.

Which one should I use?

	Your broker’s BO / CO	AutoTrader AT_BO / AT_CO
Works on	Only brokers that offer it	Every broker we support
Extra intraday margin	Sometimes	No
Target and stop-loss	Yes	Yes
Trailing stop-loss	Where the broker supports it	Yes, everywhere
Change levels after placing	Where the broker supports it	Yes, from the Positions tab
Levels rest at the exchange	Yes	No — watched by AutoTrader Web

If your broker’s bracket order works well for you and the extra margin matters, keep using it. Use ours when your broker does not offer one, when its version is unreliable, or when you want the same behaviour across every account you trade.