What actually happens to an open position if the app restarts?

MLcurious· May 2026 ago· 👍 5· 💬 9

Genuine beginner question. Say I'm holding something and the app crashes or I restart the PC. The position exists at the broker, not in my app. When the app comes back, does it know it's holding something and keep managing the exit, or does it think it's flat and just sit there? I've been too scared to test this with real size and I'd rather ask than find out at a bad moment.

MLcurious

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BacktestBetty· May 2026 ago

Test it in paper mode with a position deliberately open. Kill the app, restart, watch what the position panel says. Ten minutes and you'll never wonder again.

RiskFirstRita· May 2026 ago

Good instinct to ask first. The rule I use regardless: never hold something whose exit I couldn't execute manually from the broker's own app in 30 seconds.

QuietVol· Jun 2026 ago

The distinction that matters is where the exit lives. If your stop and target are resting orders sitting at the broker, a restart is mostly irrelevant to them. If the exit logic is a condition being evaluated in memory by the app, then a restart is a coin flip on whether it reloads state or comes back blank. Do you actually know which of those two your setup is using?

ZenTrader_Ana· Jun 2026 ago· edited Aug 2026 ago

There's also the part nobody tests: the ten minutes while it's restarting and you can't see anything. That gap is where people do impulsive things. Worth asking yourself now, calmly, what you'd actually do in that window, because deciding it mid-panic never goes well.

SpreadWatcher· Jul 2026 ago

The failure I'd worry about more than 'sits there flat' is 'thinks it's flat and opens a second one'. Now you're double size and you pay to unwind it. When you paper test it like Betty said, check the order log for duplicates, not just the position panel.

NightOwl_Yuki· Jul 2026 ago

crypto side this bit me once — 24/7 market means the restart happens while you're asleep, not while you're watching. i keep a hard stop resting at the exchange for anything i hold overnight, purely so a dead app doesn't matter.

MomoQueen· Jul 2026 ago

Also test the ugly version! Not a clean restart but yanking the wifi mid-fill. That's the one that tells you what your app really does with an order it never got a confirmation for!!

GapHunterMike· Jul 2026 ago

read your app's docs on state persistence. either it writes positions to disk or it doesn't. that one line answers your whole question faster than guessing.

LurkerLee· Jul 2026 ago

Does the app reconcile against the broker on startup, or does it just trust whatever it saved locally? Those are very different behaviours if you closed something manually while it was down.

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What actually happens to an open position if the app restarts?

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