Why can’t I enable live trading?
When you try to enable live trading, SleeveFolio re-checks every requirement itself, on its own systems, in this order. Whichever message you hit, this is the full list it’s drawing from:
| Message | Cause | Remedy |
|---|---|---|
| “Live trading requires a Pro subscription” | You’re on Free | Pro upgrades are paused for now while we finish the safety groundwork, so only paper trading is open and this can’t be cleared yet. When live trading opens, you’ll upgrade under Settings → Billing. |
| “Subscription is not active” | Payment failed or the subscription lapsed | Update your card in the billing portal (Settings → Billing, which opens Stripe, our payment processor) |
| “Enable 2FA before enabling live trading” | No authenticator enrolled | Set up 2FA |
| “Save your live Alpaca keys…” | No live keys stored | Save live keys in Settings → Broker |
| “Too many incorrect codes. Code entry is locked for 15 minutes after your last wrong code.” | Five wrong authenticator codes in a row locked this session’s attempts (a brute-force guard). The lock lasts 15 minutes from your last wrong code; trying again during the lock doesn’t restart it | Wait out the 15 minutes, then enter a fresh code |
| “That code is wrong or expired” | Authenticator code didn’t match, often a phone clock that’s off by a minute or more | Re-enter a fresh code; check device time sync |
| “The live-trading safety checks are not all passing” | The gate: you’re on paper while you switch, and paper drift clears itself on every check, so this usually means the latest check couldn’t be fully read (its list of differences was cut short or unreadable) | Press Re-check now on Reconciliation; the block lifts on the next clean check |
Drift special cases
Two non-obvious ways the drift check blocks. The one you can meet while switching on live is a reconciliation check whose results couldn’t be read — for example, one that found so many differences at once that its list was cut short (the gate blocks rather than trust a broken check; run a fresh re-check from the Reconciliation page). The other, an acknowledgment that no longer applies, is about live drift once you’re trading live (each acknowledgment covers only the exact mismatch you reviewed; if the drift grows or changes shape, it alerts again and needs a fresh review). On paper, changed drift is acknowledged again automatically by the check itself, so this case doesn’t hold you up there.
Already live, and a live order was refused?
Switching live trading on uses the gate above. Once you’re live, each live order is also checked against your latest broker check: if none has finished in the last 90 minutes, or the latest one failed, the order is refused (“live orders are paused”) and nothing is sent. That’s not the gate, and it doesn’t switch you back to paper; press Re-check now on Reconciliation, and once a check succeeds, live orders go through again. See Live orders need a recent check.
If the refusal says Alpaca refused your saved live keys, the keys themselves stopped working (regenerated or revoked at Alpaca): save a working pair in Settings → Broker, and live orders go through again once a check succeeds. See Keys that stopped working.