Doing nothing is a decision
The hardest skill in systematic trading is sitting on your hands during regime-off periods. We measured it: roughly one day in three the orchestrator places zero orders for the median account.
That's by design. Most of the cumulative drawdown in a curve-fit strategy comes from trying to trade in regimes it wasn't tuned for.
The skip reasons, ranked by frequency
Visible on /account → Bot → Recent orders:
- regime-off — BTC below 200-day EMA with hysteresis. Most trend sleeves stand down.
- funding-gate — funding rate implies negative expected return (Phase 70).
- dd-brake — sleeve class hit its drawdown trigger; allocation scaled to 40% (Phase 82).
- microstructure-gate — L2 spread too wide for safe execution (Phase 69).
- below-min-notional — exchange minimum order size > target size.
The first three are correct, by-design behaviour. The last two are situational.
When to actually worry
Three signs of a real problem:
- Last tick > 10 minutes ago — check the system status page.
- Repeated "failed" with the same exchange error — your API key permissions changed.
- "insufficient balance" — you withdrew funds without lowering allocation $.
Email support@smartbull.ai with your bot ID and we'll trace your last 100 ticks.