Why Is My Strategy Not Taking Trades?

Related questions this article answers:

• Why did my entry not trigger?
• Conditions are satisfied but trade is not firing
• Why did the trade not trigger after conditions were met?
• Strategy conditions are true but no entry was taken
• Why is my strategy not taking any trade?
• Entry dot did not appear even though conditions were met

First Thing to Check: Notification Logs

Before anything else, open your Notification Logs.

Go to your deployment → click the three dots (⋮) → open Notification Logs.

If you are checking after market hours, make sure you adjust the date/time filter to include the time when your strategy was running. Otherwise the log will appear empty even if entries exist

Once you have your logs open, you will be in one of two situations:

Situation 1: Logs Are Printing But No Trade Was Taken

This means your strategy conditions are being evaluated correctly — but something in the Position Builder is preventing the trade from actually firing.

Open your Position Builder and check the following:

❌ Wrong Lot Size vs Quantity

This is the most common mistake.

If you are trading options, you must use Lots — not Quantity. If you enter Quantity as 1, the trade will not fire because options require the correct lot size.

Fix: Switch the field to Lots and enter 1. TradeTron will automatically use the correct lot size for that instrument.

❌ Wrong Expiry Keyword

Make sure the expiry keyword matches the instrument you are trading.

For MCX strategies, there are two separate expiry keywords — do not mix them up:

Both are used in the FX section of the positon builder

• MCX Option Expiry — for MCX options

• MCX Future Expiry — for MCX futures

For crypto strategies on Delta Exchange, use:

• Crypto Current Day Expiry — to trade in daily expiry

❌ Using ATM Instead of ATM Spot (US Markets)

If you are trading US markets, directly using ATM will not work because futures data is not available for US instruments.

Fix: Go to the Strike FX section and use ATM Spot instead of ATM.

❌ Using ATM Instead of ATM Spot (Indian Markets — Spot-Based Strategies)

This is a frequently missed issue in Indian market strategies.

By default, ATM is calculated based on the futures chart. If your strategy is based on the spot chart (for example, Nifty Spot), using plain ATM will give you the wrong strike.

Fix: Use ATM Spot in the Strike FX section to calculate the strike based on the spot price.

This is also the answer to: "Why is my ATM strike wrong?" or "Why did my strategy pick the wrong strike?" — this is very likely the reason.

Note:- This situation you may notice in NFO and BFO as for these we have spot and future chart both. for MCX and crypto we have future chart only .

Situation 2: Logs Are Not Printing At All

If no logs are printing, it means your strategy conditions are not being evaluated — or a keyword inside your condition builder is failing silently.

Step 1 — Run a Force Entry to generate a log.

Temporarily add a condition that is always true during market hours. For example:

This forces a log to print so you can inspect the keyword outputs.

Strategy conditions:-

Notifiaitons logs output:-

Step 2 — Open the log and check each condition's output.

Every condition in the log should show a value after the colon. For example, if you used SMA, it should show a number. If you used ATR, it should show a number.

If you see a NaN or blank output next to any condition, that keyword is not returning data. That is why your trade is not firing.

Common Reasons for NaN Outputs

Using a series indicator directly instead of inside a position keyword

Series output indicators like SMA or ATR must be nested correctly under the position keyword structure. Using them directly in the condition builder will cause a NaN output.

Fix: Check the Keyword Documentation for the correct structure of the indicator you are using.

link for keyword documentaion:- https://tradetron.tech/keyword/documentation

Using Traded Instrument Name instead of Traded Instrument

These are two different keywords:

• Traded Instrument Name — returns a text label (e.g. "NIFTY2560119000CE"). Not useful for conditions.
• Traded Instrument — returns the actual price, strike, quantity, and other trade data.

Fix: Replace Traded Instrument Name with Traded Instrument wherever you need price or strike data.

Using the wrong instrument name under the keyword

Double check that the instrument name you have typed exactly matches the available instruments in TradeTron. A typo or wrong format will cause the keyword to return NaN.

Using VWAP or Volume Series on a Spot Index Chart

Volume-based keywords like VWAP and Volume Series require futures chart data. If you have selected the spot index chart for your strategy, these keywords will return NaN.

Fix: Switch the chart to the futures instrument, or use an alternative keyword that works with spot data.

Using the wrong Leg or Condition ID under Traded Instrument

If your strategy has multiple legs, make sure the Leg ID and Condition ID you have referenced under the Traded Instrument keyword match the correct leg and entry condition.

Still Not Sure? Use Indicator Value Time to Verify

If your force entry log looks clean — all outputs showing, no NaN — but you still believe conditions were met and no trade fired, use the Indicator Value Time keyword.

This keyword prints the output of any indicator at a specific candle's closing time, so you can verify exactly what value your strategy was seeing at that moment.

Recreate your keywords using Indicator Value Time, take a force entry, and compare those outputs against your condition thresholds.

If your strategy is configured to check conditions on the current forming candle (also referred to as the 0th candle or live/running candle), verifying whether conditions were met at a specific moment becomes inherently unreliable — and this is true for any algorithmic trading platform, not just TradeTron.

Here is why: the value of a forming candle changes continuously with every tick. The strategy engine evaluates conditions sequentially in a loop, not all simultaneously at a single instant. This means it is entirely possible that conditions were true at one moment, but by the time the engine completed its cycle and reached execution, the values had shifted enough that the conditions no longer held. The entry would not trigger in that case — and that behaviour is technically correct.

Additionally, Indicator Value Time can only return values from closed candles. It cannot fetch the state of a forming candle at a past moment in time, since that data was never stored as a fixed value. This means there is no reliable way to retroactively verify whether conditions on a forming candle were satisfied at the exact moment the system checked them.

If you are consistently missing entries and your strategy runs on the forming candle, consider switching conditions to evaluate on the previous closed candle for more predictable and verifiable execution.

Errors That Can Cause Issues in Strategy Execution

Empty condition lines in the Condition Builder

Do not leave blank/empty condition lines in your Condition Builder. Even a single empty line can cause an error during strategy execution. Remove any unused or incomplete condition rows before deploying.

Using a List in a Non-List Based Strategy

If your strategy is not designed to work with lists, using a list-based keyword or input will cause the strategy to malfunction. Make sure the data type you are passing matches what your strategy structure expects.

Incorrect Condition Structure for Traded Instrument Keywords

Writing the wrong logic structure when using keywords like Get Runtime Traded Instrument or Traded Instrument Name is a common cause of silent errors — the strategy runs but behaves unexpectedly.

Refer to the official documentation for the recommended structure before building your conditions: 👉 Recommended Structure for Get Runtime Traded Instrument / Traded Instrument Name

Still Not Resolved? Contact Support

If you have gone through all of the above and your strategy is still not taking trades, reach out to the TradeTron support team directly. Share your notification logs when you contact us — it speeds up the investigation significantly.

Quick Reference — Most Common Causes

Updated on: 18/05/2026