Frequently asked questions

No. Every order routes directly to your own Alpaca account. SleeveFolio stores your API keys encrypted and submits orders on your behalf. Funds and positions live at the broker, in your name, at all times.

Nothing happens to them. Positions live at your broker. Cancelling drops you to the Free tier at the end of the billing period: live trading turns off and you keep paper trading. Your holdings remain fully yours to manage in the Alpaca dashboard.

No. Alpaca trading API keys cannot move money out of your brokerage account, only trade within it. Withdrawal rights stay with you at the broker.

Live trading needs four things: a Pro subscription in good standing, two-factor authentication enrolled, live Alpaca keys saved, and zero unresolved reconciliation drift (no unexplained mismatch between SleeveFolio’s records and your broker’s). Pro upgrades aren’t open yet, so for now only paper trading is available. Open Paper → Live to see which safety check is red; there are no performance requirements.

No. Your paper history stays. The environment badge shows which record set (paper or live) you’re looking at, and orders carry their environment (and fills inherit it through their order), so the two never mix.

One environment is active at a time: the persistent PAPER / LIVE badge always shows which. Automation is separate: once you go live, auto-execute keeps trading your paper account until you turn on Live auto-execute in Settings → Strategies. Returning to paper is one click in Settings → Broker, with no gate; going live repeats the full ceremony.

Daily, before the US market opens (12:00 UTC, or 7 or 8 a.m. in New York), for every account with broker keys saved. Crypto markets trade around the clock, but coins are scored on this same once-a-day run, alongside your stocks. A fresh run also starts on its own when you finish setting up your account with symbols chosen, when you change your universe’s symbols (by hand or by importing a settings file), when an automatic list update adds symbols, and when you switch to live trading or turn on Live auto-execute. When the signals on screen are more than 20 hours old, or there are none from the last day, the Signals page also offers a Refresh, with a short cooldown between manual runs so back-to-back presses don’t recompute an already-fresh set.

Not as custom code. You add curated presets to your mix, then open "Advanced: per-strategy tuning" on Settings → Strategies, pick a strategy, and adjust its built-in four-factor weights (momentum, low volatility, value, quality, the four measures signals score: price strength, steadiness, cheapness, profitability) yourself, alongside your universe, sleeves, and caps. Tuning edits that strategy in place; Reset to default restores the preset.

Nothing until you say so. The strategy questionnaire (Find your fit… on Settings → Strategies) suggests up to three strategies, a split, and automation rules; Apply recommendations adds the suggested strategies (it never removes one), sets the split or turns auto-allocation on, and sets Strategy-managed risk, sell-to-fund rotation, and your stop-loss. The risk questionnaire (Suggest my caps… on Risk & Caps) suggests your budgets and caps; Fill in as pending changes only fills the form, and nothing saves until you press Apply changes. Neither ever turns auto-execute on: if it is recommended and your paper Alpaca keys are saved, the usual ENABLE AUTO confirmation opens and you decide (without paper keys, the Find your fit card offers Enable auto-execute… once you have saved them). Neither touches live trading. Each opens by itself once, on your first visit to its page while nothing is set yet; its skip button (Skip — I’ll set things myself on Strategies, Skip — keep the defaults for now on Risk & Caps) or simply closing it stops it opening by itself again, and its button on the page brings it back any time.

The symbol ranked mid-pack: its composite score is neither in the top band (buy) nor the bottom band (sell). A hold signal places no order by itself. With auto-execute on, though, a holding that reads hold can still be sold: sell-to-fund rotation (on by default; switch it off on Settings → Strategies) can sell some or all of your weakest hold to make room for a clearly stronger buy, and a stop-loss, if you’ve set one, sells regardless of rank.

The kill switch: in the top bar on desktop, and in the navigation menu’s Kill switch section on a phone. Pause halts auto-execution instantly; Cancel open orders cancels every open order at the broker; Liquidate immediately sends orders to sell every position at the going market price (market orders), after a typed confirmation.

No. It immediately sends orders to sell every position at the going market price (market orders). The confirm modal shows a sell summary (the positions, estimated proceeds, and open orders affected) and requires typing LIQUIDATE before the button arms. It also doesn’t pause trading: if auto-execute is on, use Pause as well so its next run can’t buy back in.

To sell a holding completely, part-shares included, press Close on its row (on a phone, its card) on the Positions page and confirm: SleeveFolio sends one market order for exactly the quantity your broker holds, in the account shown. To sell only part of it, use the order ticket: press + New order on the Dashboard, Orders, or Positions page, choose Sell, and enter the symbol and how many shares or coins to sell (stock sells from the ticket take whole shares). Liquidate is different: it sells every position in every account you’ve connected.

Data sources sit behind fallback chains (price history: Tiingo → Alpaca IEX, for example), so a single outage usually just switches to the next source automatically. Data pages show a freshness badge with the age of the last sync (it turns amber, then stale, as data ages), and broker-backed screens render fresh data or an explicit error, never silently old numbers.

No. A settings file carries your Auto-execute switch and each strategy’s Follow list updates switch, but importing one never changes either of them, on or off. If the file has a switch set differently from yours, the review shows it, grayed out, with what switching it would do, so you can switch it yourself right after the import, from the switches the import result shows; and if the file has Auto-execute off while yours is on, the confirmation reminds you that the imported changes trade from the next run (or once you Resume, if trading is paused), so you can pause first or switch it off yourself.

Use one of your recovery codes at the sign-in code prompt: each works exactly once. A recovery code only signs you in, though: turning two-factor authentication off, which is how you move it to a new device and get a fresh set of codes, needs a code from your current authenticator app. Without the device, every sign-in uses up one more code, and once they’re gone you’re locked out. That’s why it pays to mint a fresh set (turn 2FA off and back on in Settings → Account) while you still have your authenticator. Re-enrolling issues a new set of ten and retires the old one. If you’re trading live, turning 2FA off reverts your account to paper (live auto-execute switches off too); go live again through the usual ceremony once you’ve re-enrolled.

Everything in SleeveFolio’s database: profile, broker keys, strategies, notifications, and your audit events. Those records are erased immediately, not just hidden. A copy of your audit log is archived for compliance and retained as set out in the privacy policy. Your subscription is cancelled immediately. Positions and orders at your broker are untouched; manage those in the Alpaca dashboard.