Connections fail for a small number of reasons, and each broker has its own.
ProjectX
- The key is rejected. ProjectX needs your API key, not your account password. Generate a fresh one in TopstepX and paste it in again. Keys can be revoked or regenerated, which invalidates the old one.
- The username is rejected. It is the email address you log in to your firm with.
- It connects but positions have no bracket (the stop and target attached to a trade). Turn on the Auto OCO Brackets setting in TopstepX, in each account's risk settings. Wildflower cannot set it for you.
Rithmic
- Rithmic refused the sign-in ("permission denied"). Start with the system name. It has to be the system your account is really on: a Lucid Trading account signs in on LucidTrading, not on Rithmic 01. The other cause is a Rithmic market-data subscription that is not active. Check both, then enter the sign-in again. While it waits, the connection stays switched on or off exactly as you set it. Wildflower tries the sign-in again every few minutes. It emails you once when the sign-in is refused, and once when it works again.
- Your login is signed in somewhere else. Rithmic allows one session per login. If R Trader Pro or another platform is open with the same login, Rithmic refuses Wildflower, and the row says so. Close the other session or sign out of it there, and Wildflower signs in again by itself.
- Another Wildflower connection signed in at the same moment. This happens briefly during an update. Wildflower signs in again by itself.
- Username or password rejected. Rithmic checks both. Re-enter them carefully.
- Rithmic declined the connection. Not a login problem, and retrying cannot fix it. Contact the firm whose system you chose and ask them to enable Wildflower on their Rithmic system. The account stays switched on or off exactly as you set it while it waits, and Wildflower picks it up on its own once the firm has enabled it.
- Still waiting for your computer. Your sign-in is on its way and nothing has come back yet. Nothing is lost and you do not need to enter it again. Check the computer running Wildflower is on and connected.
- You are on a demo trial. Rithmic requires a paid market-data subscription. The connection Wildflower uses cannot connect to a trial.
Reading the connection row
The sign-in row is not a trading account, so it never says "Offline". It says what your sign-in is doing: no sign-in yet, sent to your computer, signing in, signed in, signed in elsewhere, sign-in refused, or switched off. If it says refused, the reason and what to check are on the row. Those steps only show for a recent refusal while the connection is switched on. If the connection is switched off, the row shows when the last sign-in failed and says to switch it on to try again. A sign-in that works clears the old message.
It connected, but the account will not switch on
That is a different problem. Before Wildflower places real orders through a broker, it checks that the connection can do the basics in that session: report a fill, place a stop and target with the order, and pass on a rejection. Until that check passes, the account will not switch on, and the account page says which part was not met.
Still stuck
Note the time and what you saw, then see Getting help. Knowing the exact minute makes the problem much faster to find.