Steam buy order automation and exposure guards
Steam buy order automation is useful only when the runner knows when not to buy. SteamMarketRunner combines price algorithms, wallet balance checks, exposure limits, liquidity filters, and order-book depth guards before placing a live order.
A buy order reserves Steam wallet funds and can fill later. SteamMarketRunner can automate actions you configure, but you remain responsible for connected accounts, Steam wallet exposure, strategy settings, and any account action or market loss. Start with small limits and narrow item scopes before scaling live buy orders.
What has to pass before a buy order is placed
A buy candidate must pass several gates:
| Gate | Purpose | Related guide |
|---|---|---|
| BUY enabled | Avoids trading items you only want to watch or sell | How trading works |
| Price calculated | Ensures the algorithm has enough market data | Pricing algorithms |
| Profit target | Rejects orders that cannot meet your margin settings | Trading settings |
| Wallet balance | Prevents spending when balance is unknown or insufficient | Trading settings |
| Max exposure | Caps total open buy order value | Trading settings |
| Depth gate | Avoids queueing too deep relative to monthly sales | Glossary |
| Trend filters | Blocks buying into configured downtrends | Trading settings |
If wallet balance is unknown, SteamMarketRunner treats it as zero and skips buying. This fail-closed behavior is intentional.
Exposure guard
The exposure guard limits the value of open buy orders. It considers existing active orders as well as candidates in the current cycle, so a new analysis does not ignore funds already reserved by previous orders.
Use maxOrderExposure to set a hard account-level cap. If you do not set it, the system still applies balance-based checks, but explicit caps are easier to reason about while reviewing early live results.
Order size modes
SteamMarketRunner supports two order-size styles:
- Percent mode — quantity is based on monthly sales and capped by max items per order.
- Fixed mode — quantity is a fixed number of items, ignoring the percentage calculation.
Percent mode is usually safer for broad item sets because it scales down on illiquid items. Fixed mode is clearer when you intentionally want exactly one or a few items.
Order-book depth guard
The depth guard estimates whether your planned buy order would sit too deep in the queue. ordersPlace is a percentage of monthly sales; for example, if monthly sales are 100 and ordersPlace is 5, the allowed queue depth is about 5 items.
Set 0, -1, or leave it empty to disable the guard. For early automation, prefer enabling it until you understand the item’s order-book behavior.
What happens when Steam rejects buying
If Steam reports a full inventory or insufficient funds, SteamMarketRunner temporarily pauses buying for the account. Selling, health checks, and maintenance can continue. The pause expires automatically and does not permanently disable item BUY flags.
Safe rollout checklist
- Set a small
maxOrderExposure. - Enable BUY on a small group first.
- Use percent order sizing before fixed sizing.
- Enable monthly sales and depth filters for unfamiliar items.
- Review skipped reasons in the Market status tooltip and event log.
Next step
Read Trading settings to map these guards to UI fields, then use How trading works to interpret skipped buy candidates.