@yashas @krishna_kishore @kGRGEpOlJ1
Hi everyone
I’ve run into a specific limitation that breaks reversal-style strategies (where a position can flip between long and short based on incoming webhook signals). Sharing this in case others hit the same issue, and in case the team can look into it.
Setup:
-
An automation with a recurring Start trigger (e.g., “Every 1 minute”).
-
Two webhook-triggered branches (Buy and Sell), each going through a “Square off automation positions” node before placing a new order.
-
This is meant to reverse the position on every signal: if currently short, a Buy signal should square off the short and open a fresh long, and vice versa.
The issue:
When a full “run” of the automation completes (i.e., a webhook branch has fired and finished), the automation’s Start trigger spawns a new fresh run within about a minute — this happens automatically, even without any manual Stop/Start. In this new run, the “Square off automation positions” node no longer has any memory of the position opened in the previous run. Its internal count comes back as 0, even though the account still has an open position from that earlier run.
Concretely:
-
Buy signal arrives → Square off finds nothing to close (count 0) → opens +1.
-
Some time later (once the automation has cycled to a fresh run), a Sell signal arrives → Square off again reports count 0, even though the account is still holding +1 from step 1 → it does NOT close the existing +1, it just places a fresh -1.
-
Net result: the account nets out to 0 (flat) instead of the expected -1 (a full reversal). The strategy’s intended position is now wrong, silently.
I verified this by deliberately holding a position from the previous day (unaffected — square-off correctly recognized and closed it when no restart had happened overnight), versus a position opened and left for a while within a run that had cycled/restarted — which the automation failed to recognize when the reversal signal came.
Impact: For any reversal-based automation relying on “Square off automation positions” with a recurring schedule, positions can silently end up flat or unbalanced whenever a new run spawns between the entry signal and the reversal signal — which, in live trading, is essentially guaranteed to happen sooner or later given unpredictable gaps between signals.
Suggested fix: The “Square off automation positions” tracking should persist across automation runs for the same automation (i.e., it should reflect the account’s actual current open position tagged to that automation, not just orders placed within the current run). Alternatively, please document this limitation clearly so users don’t build reversal logic on top of it without knowing the risk.
Workaround we’re currently using: avoid Square-off nodes entirely and instead chain a fixed sequence of Webhook → Place order (fixed quantity/side) → Continue legs in one long sequential automation, so no position-tracking logic is needed at all. This works but is clunky and caps the number of reversals per day to however many legs you pre-build.
Would appreciate it if the team could confirm whether this is expected behavior or a bug, and whether there’s a setting I am missing that preserves square-off tracking across runs.
Thanks!