Max Per Trade vs Trade Amount (Trader Bot Sizing)
What Max per trade means on Polycopy Trader Bots: your copy order ceiling, not the trader's order size. How Trade amount (Fixed mode) maps to Manage settings after activation.
Last updated August 21, 2026
Max per trade is YOUR copy size
Max per trade is the most your bot can spend on one copied trade. It caps YOUR order after Polycopy has calculated a size from Fixed, Conviction, or Kelly. It does not mean "only copy when the trader's order is under $X" — nothing in the bot filters on the size of the trader's order, and a leader-order floor was measured and found harmful.
How sizing is calculated
Selective, Balanced, Broad and Mirror all place a flat $5 ticket per copy. Under Custom you can choose instead: Fixed (every copy uses the same amount), Conviction 0.5x-3.0x (size scales with how big the trader's bet is against their own average, clamped by min and max per trade), or Kelly (size from bankroll and estimated edge, also clamped by min and max per trade).
Trade amount at bot creation (Fixed only)
When you pick Fixed allocation during setup you enter Trade amount, and that is the exact size of every copy. Polycopy stores it as both the minimum and the maximum per trade. After launch there is no separate Trade amount field: edit the same number under Settings → Max per trade, and Min per trade under Advanced will match it.
Min per trade
Min per trade is the floor on your copy size, and it can never go below the $5 platform minimum for Trader Bots. If Kelly or Conviction suggests something smaller, the order is raised to the floor rather than shrunk. The floor is not arbitrary: it is the exchange's 5-share minimum multiplied by the highest a share can cost, so anything under it can buy a position that is impossible to sell.
Total capital vs per-trade caps
Total capital is the pool allocated to the bot. Max per trade limits one order; the daily budget limits total new spend in a day. The three interact: you can be inside max per trade on every copy and still stop trading because capital is fully deployed, or because the day's budget is used.
When the size on screen is not the size you set
Two things move it legitimately. A copy is sized in dollars but placed in shares, so rounding to the market's tick shifts the total by cents. And above roughly 62¢ the 8-share floor starts deciding the order instead of your ticket, because $5 buys fewer than 8 shares at that price. If the size is off by more than that, send us the bot name and one order that looks wrong at help@polycopy.app.