Guided setup: the two questionnaires

Two short questionnaires help with the two screens most people find hardest to start on. The strategy questionnaire lives on Settings → Strategies (the Find your fit… button) and suggests which strategies to run and how to split your funds between them. The risk questionnaire lives on Risk & Caps (Suggest my caps…) and suggests your sleeve budgets and caps. Each asks seven questions, one screen at a time, then shows a results step; nothing changes until you confirm there. The same two questionnaires are built into the onboarding wizard (see the end of this page).

Every step carries the same one-line reminder: a questionnaire turns your own answers into a starting point, it is not investment advice, and nothing changes (or, on Risk & Caps, nothing saves) until you apply. It works only from your answers and your current settings, never from your holdings or the market.

When a questionnaire opens by itself

The first time you open Settings → Strategies with nothing set yet (you have never saved a strategy mix, so yours is still the one-line All-Weather Blend default), the strategy questionnaire opens on its own with a short intro. Risk & Caps does the same while your limits are still the defaults. On that intro, Start the 7 questions begins the questions, and the skip button closes it: Skip — I’ll set things myself on Settings → Strategies, Skip — keep the defaults for now on Risk & Caps. Closing a questionnaire that opened by itself any other way (the ✕, Escape, a click outside it, or Not now on its results) counts as a skip too, as long as you have not applied it or (on Risk & Caps) filled it in. Either way it never opens by itself again: once you have skipped or closed it, applied it, or filled it in, it opens only when you press its button on the page (Find your fit… or Suggest my caps…). Skipping changes nothing, and a questionnaire you opened from its button closes freely: that records nothing.

The strategy questionnaire

Seven questions: what you mainly want this account to do; how long until you expect to need the money; what you would do if the account dropped 20% in a month; how much investing you have done; how hands-on you want to be day to day; which of four styles sounds most like you (pick up to two); and whether SleeveFolio should sell the weakest holding in a full bucket to make room for a stronger buy. Each answer card says in one line what picking it does to the suggestion, so there are no hidden rules.

What it suggests

The results step names a profile (Balanced grower, Steady keeper, Trend seeker, or Income harvester) and a suggested mix: up to three strategies from the Strategy library, each with a share of your funds and a one-line reason quoting the answer that drove it, marked STRONG or GOOD by how closely it matched. The shares add up to everything above your cash reserve floor (the share of your account auto-allocation always keeps in cash: 10% unless you have changed it on Risk & Caps). The strategies it left out are listed too, each with why. Under the mix sit the automation rules it recommends:

• Strategy-managed risk: on (each strategy’s built-in protection applies to its own slice).
• Auto-allocate between strategies: on, with a preference (Conservative, Balanced, or Aggressive) set by your answer to the 20%-drop question. Unless you chose Automatic, but I set the split: then it stays off and the suggested shares become your split.
• Sell-to-fund rotation: on or off, straight from the last question.
• A stop-loss at 8%, 12%, 15%, or 20% below what you paid, again by the 20%-drop answer.
• Whether auto-execute is recommended: it is unless you chose Show me first — I place trades. This is a recommendation only (see below).
• If you need the money within a year, a note suggesting a 20% cash reserve floor. The floor itself lives on Risk & Caps; the questionnaire never changes it.

What Apply recommendations does

Not now closes the results without changing anything (on a questionnaire that opened by itself, that counts as a skip, as above). Apply recommendations works the result out again on the server from your answers, then, in one step:

• adds each suggested strategy that isn’t in your mix yet. It never removes a strategy: one you already run that wasn’t suggested stays in the mix.
• sets the split. With auto-allocation recommended on, it turns auto-allocation on with the suggested preference, and the split follows from there (the exact percentages are auto-allocation’s to set, as always). With auto-allocation off, it saves the suggested shares as your split, and a strategy you already had that wasn’t suggested goes to 0% (unfunded: it stops buying and keeps its protective sells).
• turns Strategy-managed risk on, sets Sell-to-fund rotation to your answer, and turns your stop-loss on at the suggested percent. These are the same settings as the switches on Settings → Strategies, and they land in the audit log the same way.
• records your answers and the result, so the page can show them later.

What it never does: turn auto-execute on, touch live trading or Live auto-execute, follow a published list on your behalf, enroll two-factor authentication, or touch the kill switch. A strategy it adds starts with list updates off; turn them on from the Universe page if you want it to follow a published list.

If the result recommended auto-execute, yours is off, and your paper Alpaca keys are saved (Settings → Broker), the usual Enable auto-execute confirmation opens next and asks you to type ENABLE AUTO: the same confirmation the switch on that page uses, with the same requirements. Close it and auto-execute stays off; nothing you applied depends on it. Without paper keys nothing opens: the card offers Enable auto-execute… instead, ready once you have saved them (until then the button is disabled, with a note saying to save your paper Alpaca keys first). Until auto-execute is on, your new mix shapes the rankings on the Signals page and nothing trades. If auto-execute is already on, the new mix trades from the next daily run, like any other change to your strategies. See Auto-execute.

Afterwards

The card at the top of Settings → Strategies then reads ✓ APPLIED with the date, your profile, the strategies in your mix, and the automation rules it set. While auto-execute is recommended but off, it also offers Enable auto-execute…, which opens that same confirmation; the button needs your paper Alpaca keys saved, and until they are it stays disabled with a note saying so. Retake starts the seven questions over; applying again adds and re-sets the same way, and still removes nothing.

The risk questionnaire

Seven questions: how much of the account you could lose in a bad month and still stay the course; how many names you want to hold at once; how much of the account crypto should get, if any; how much cash to keep aside; how much trading you are comfortable with per day; how concentrated one sector may get; and whether orders you place by hand should count toward the engine’s daily limits.

What it suggests

The results step names a profile (Cautious, Measured, Comfortable, or Bold, by your first answer) and lists every Risk & Caps limit in a now → suggested table, card by card, with the answer that drove each one. Limits the questionnaire doesn’t ask about (the per-trade and per-day dollar caps and single-factor exposure) say so and keep their current value. The rest map from your answers like this:

The equities sleeve never drops below 40%: if your crypto and cash answers would push it there, cash is trimmed first, then crypto, and the row’s reason says so. Every suggested value is kept within the limit’s own allowed range, the same range the form enforces when you type.

Three settings sit outside the pending batch and are suggestions set separately: the Cash reserve floor (your cash answer), Auto-scale the per-day cap (off if you chose A few orders a week, on otherwise), and Orders placed manually included in cap (on if you chose Yes, count them). The answer cards say so as you go (“set separately”), and the results list the three in their own section with today’s value, the suggested one, and a SAVES ON ITS OWN tag. The fill-in never changes them; their own controls on Risk & Caps do (the Strategy allocation card and Advanced cap settings), each saving the moment you use it.

What Fill in as pending changes does

It saves nothing. It fills the suggested values into the Risk & Caps form exactly as if you had typed them: only the limits in the table above (the form’s own fields, and only those whose suggested value differs from today’s) become pending changes, never the three settings that save on their own. The header then reads N PENDING CHANGES and Review, Apply changes, and Discard work as they do for hand edits (see Apply or discard pending changes). Your limits change only when you press Apply changes; Discard puts the saved values back. The questionnaire records your answers and the result at that moment, so the card at the top of the page then reads Suggested caps from followed by the date you filled them in, and offers Retake. Not now closes the results without filling anything in (on a questionnaire that opened by itself, that counts as a skip, as above).

In the onboarding wizard

The wizard’s Risk and Strategies steps each hold one of the questionnaires inline, with a choice at the top: Answer 7 questions (recommended) or Skip for now. Answer them and the step shows a compact results summary; the Review step then lists your risk limits (profile, how many values changed from the defaults, and which), your strategies (profile and mix), and the automation rules. Finish applies both at once: the risk answers become your starting limits (saved directly, through the same checks as Risk & Caps’ Apply changes), and the strategy answers set your mix and automation exactly as Apply recommendations does. Skip a questionnaire and the step keeps the defaults (All-Weather Blend at 100%; the default budgets and caps) and nothing is recorded, so that questionnaire still offers itself on your first visit to its page.

Whatever you answer, auto-execute stays off: the wizard never asks for ENABLE AUTO, and the Review step says so in its own words: “Auto-execute stays off. Turn it on from Settings → Strategies when you’re ready; it asks you to confirm first. Live trading is a separate gate.”