// GLOSSARY

Notional cap

A hard limit on the dollar value a strategy, agent, or subaccount may deploy — per order, per market, or in total. Enforced server-side, it bounds the worst case of any bug or AI misjudgment to a number you chose in advance.

Notional is the dollar value at stake: contracts × price. A notional cap says that number may never exceed your limit, no matter what the strategy wants.

Worked example

You give an agent a $500 total cap and a $100 per-order cap. It tries to buy 2,000 contracts at 40¢ — $800 notional. The API layer rejects it before it reaches any venue. It resubmits 250 contracts at 40¢ ($100): accepted. Even if the agent loops and fills repeatedly, exposure stops at $500.

Design notes

• Per-order, per-market, and aggregate caps catch different failures: a fat-finger, over-concentration, and a slow leak respectively.
• Server-side or it doesn't count. A cap in the bot's config is a suggestion; a cap enforced by the API between bot and venue is a guarantee. This is the core argument of risk limits for AI trading agents.
• Pair with subaccounts so each strategy or agent has its own budget rather than sharing one pool.

Mithril enforces notional caps on every order, human- or agent-originated, before routing.