Restrict Tradable Products in Tradovate
If you keep fat-fingering the wrong contract, or you only ever want one or two instruments touching a given account, you can make Tradovate enforce that for you with a Products Permitted whitelist.
If you keep fat-fingering the wrong contract, or you only ever want one or two instruments touching a given account, you can make Tradovate enforce that for you. The Products Permitted setting turns the account into a whitelist. You list the contracts you're allowed to trade, and every order for anything else gets rejected before it can fill.
It's a simple guardrail, but a useful one. A scalper who only trades NQ can lock the account to NQ and never open an ES position by mistake again.
What Products Permitted Does
By default a Tradovate account can trade any product you have market access and data for. Products Permitted flips that around: once it's on, the account only accepts orders for the specific symbols you've added. Everything else is blocked at the account level, so it applies whether the order comes from the platform, a mobile app, or an automated feed.
Think of it as an allow-list, not a block-list. You're not naming the products you want to avoid. You're naming the short list of products you want to keep, and Tradovate handles the rest.
Before You Start
- This is an account-level control that lives with your Tradovate risk settings, so you'll want to be logged in to the account you want to restrict.
- It's meant for live and self-funded demo accounts. On a prop firm evaluation account, product permissions are usually controlled by the firm rather than by you, so the option may be greyed out or missing. Rules vary by firm and account type, so check your firm's current setup.
- Have your symbol list ready. Know exactly which contracts you want to allow before you switch it on, because anything you forget to add will start rejecting.
Restrict Tradable Products in Tradovate: Step-by-Step
Open Application Settings
Log in to Tradovate on the web or desktop app. Click the Application Settings button in the top-right corner of the platform. This is the same menu you use to set daily loss limits and a max position size, so if you've touched those before, you already know where to look.
Find the Products Permitted Control
Inside Application Settings, open the Risk Settings area. Scroll to the section labelled Products Permitted (some screens show it as "Permitted Products"). If you can't find it at all, double-check you're on a live or demo account and not a firm-managed evaluation account, where the control is often hidden.
Turn On Products Permitted
Click the control to switch Products Permitted on. Until you do this, the account stays unrestricted and trades every product you have access to. Flipping the toggle is what activates the whitelist, so nothing changes for your trading until it's on and you've added at least one symbol.
Add the Products You Want to Allow
With the setting on, add each contract you plan to trade. Search for or type the product's symbol, for example NQ, ES, or MNQ, and add it to the permitted list. Add every symbol you genuinely trade, including the micro versions if you trade both minis and micros. Whatever you leave off gets blocked, so it's worth taking a moment to list them all.
Save and Test the Restriction
Save your settings. Then prove it works: place a small test order on a product that's not on your list. It should come straight back rejected. Follow that with an order on a permitted product, which should go through as normal. That thirty-second check is the difference between assuming the guardrail is on and knowing it is.




What a Blocked Order Looks Like
Say you permit only NQ. If you then try to buy ES, the order won't sit as working or partially fill. It's rejected outright, and you'll see a rejection reason on the order. Nothing reaches the exchange. This is what makes the setting a clean hard stop against trading the wrong instrument.
| Situation | Result |
|---|---|
| You permit only NQ, then place an NQ order | Accepted |
| You permit only NQ, then place an ES order | Rejected |
| Products Permitted is off | Any product you have access to is accepted |
A Few Things to Keep in Mind
If a symbol you allowed suddenly starts rejecting after a contract rollover, reopen the permitted list and confirm the entry still reads the way you expect before you go hunting for other causes.
The restriction also applies to automated orders. If you route entries from TradingView or another signal source, an order for a contract you didn't add gets rejected exactly like a manual click would. That's usually a feature, not a bug, but it's the first thing to check if an automated strategy stops filling on a new instrument. To widen or narrow what's allowed, just come back to Risk Settings and edit the list.
Products Permitted pairs well with the rest of Tradovate's account controls. Combine it with a max position limit to cap size and a daily loss limit to cap risk, and you've fenced in the account on three fronts: what you can trade, how big, and how much you can lose in a day.
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Start Your Free 5-Day TrialThis guide is for educational and informational purposes only and is not financial, investment, or trading advice. Trading futures and other leveraged products carries a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for every investor. PickMyTrade is an independent third-party automation platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Tradovate, Inc. "Tradovate" and all related names, logos, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Platform features and steps change over time, so always confirm the current process in the official Tradovate platform and documentation before acting.