The complete plan

The whole program in plain English. We run four strategies and let them compete. Three are practice-money "bots" — small computer programs that trade automatically, running in the cloud (not on any PC here). The fourth is the Agentic account, where real-money AI trading has just begun — a small $100 test, kept inside strict limits. The rule is simple: a strategy only gets real money once it proves it can beat the market (we call this "ramp on proof"). Your main Robinhood account is watch-only — nothing automatic ever trades in it.

🏆 How money is earned here — "ramp on proof"

Every strategy starts on practice money and builds a track record you can watch on the Scoreboard. To earn real dollars it has to pass three tests:

  • Enough time — at least about 20 trading days, so a good result isn't just luck.
  • Beat the S&P 500 — the S&P 500 is the simplest "just buy the whole market" investment. If a strategy can't beat that, a plain index fund is better and the strategy doesn't deserve money.
  • No scary drops — big gains that came with stomach-churning falls along the way don't count as much.

Pass all three → the strategy gets a small amount of real money (say $100–$250), with a cap on how far it can go. Keep proving itself → it gets more. Fall behind → it goes back to practice money. Winners get fed, losers get starved — and you can see it happen.

🧪 Practice-money bots (paper) — all three live in the cloud

🐢 Steady RUNNING

Owns a small basket of broad, low-cost index funds only while they're trending up, and automatically steps aside into cash the moment one turns down. Slow and patient — can go weeks without a trade.

Owns 5 funds: SPY (big US companies), QQQ (tech), IWM (smaller US companies), VEA (international), XLV (healthcare).

  • Trend rule: holds a fund only while its price is above its 200-day average. The money is split equally across the funds above that line — about 98% invested, with a small cash buffer.
  • Steps aside fast: the moment a fund drops below its 200-day average it sells to cash — it doesn't wait for month-end.
  • Rebalances once a month back to equal weight, but only nudges a fund that has drifted more than 3% of the account from its target — which keeps trading low.
  • Stop-loss on everything (about 20% below the purchase price, resting at the broker), so one disaster can't wipe the account out.
  • Buys whole shares only, never bets on a price falling, and trades only while the market is open. Aim: a smoother ride, not the biggest gain.

⚡ Quick RUNNING

The opposite style — the "dip catcher." Watches 8 big, stable, heavily-traded names; when one dips a small amount below its very-short-term average and is still in an uptrend, it buys a small slice; when the price pops back up, it sells for a small gain. Many small trades aiming for lots of little wins.

Watches 8 names: AAPL, MSFT, GOOGL, AMZN, NVDA, META, SPY, QQQ.

  • Buys the dip in an uptrend: a name has to dip 0.3% below its very-short-term average (about the last 20 minutes) and still be above its 50-day average — so it only buys dips on the way up, never a falling knife.
  • Sells the bounce: exits when the price recovers back to that average, or reaches a 0.6% profit.
  • Size limits: each buy is 3% of the account; never more than 6% in any single name; never more than 40% in dip-buys at once.
  • Big, easy-to-trade names only. Buys whole shares, never bets on a price falling, trades only during market hours, on its own separate practice account.
  • On notice: this style scored worst in our 5-year backtest — it's running to let fresh evidence decide. Verdict ~early July 2026.

⛔ Hard safety stop: if a name falls 4% below the buy price it sells right away (a stop order rests at the broker and an in-run check also fires). After a stop, that name sits out for 2 hours — so a small dip that turns into a real drop can't bury us.

🏷️ Bargain RUNNING

A patient "buy the crash" bot, running in the cloud since June 10. It keeps a big list of stable, well-known companies and does nothing most of the time. It only acts when the whole market takes a big fall — about 15% below its recent high. Then it starts buying those stable names at the lower prices and holds them for the recovery.

  • Only when the whole market drops — never when just one company falls on its own (one company falling usually means real trouble; a whole-market sell-off is the kind that tends to bounce back).
  • Buys a little at a time — a first slice at −15%, more if it keeps falling, and it always keeps spare cash on hand.
  • Sells as prices recover, pockets the rebound, then goes back to waiting.

Right now the market is near its highs, so Bargain is correctly sitting in all cash — its page logs every check it makes. Long quiet stretches mean it's working, not broken. Big crashes are rare, so we may also test it against past ones (2008, 2020, 2022) to see how it would have done.

💵 Real money — Robinhood

💼 Main account READ-ONLY

Your existing real Robinhood account, shown here so you can watch it next to the strategies. The system never makes a trade in it — it only reads the balance and what you hold. Robinhood itself enforces this: the AI can see this account but can only trade the separate Agentic account.

🤖 Agentic account LIVE — AI-TRADED

Real trading has started here (June 12). The first move was a $100 test basket — tiny slices of 19 stocks (the ones in your Main account plus the market's best performers over the last 5 years). The AI trades this account through Robinhood's official AI channel, and sends a notification to your phone for every trade.

  • Hard limits you set on the AI Control page: most it can spend per order, per day, and per stock; how much cash it must always keep; and a list of which stocks it's allowed to buy.
  • An off switch — flip it and the AI makes no trades at all. (It starts off; the trades so far were ones we told it to make.)
  • Every order is written down — proposed → approved → placed → filled — on the AI Control page.

⛔ Walled off on purpose: this account is kept small and completely separate, so no experiment here can ever touch your Main holdings. It only grows through the "ramp on proof" steps above.

⏰ When things run & update

All times US Eastern (ET). Bots run only when the US market is open — never nights, weekends, or holidays.

  • 9:30 ETUS market opens
  • 10:00 ETSteady — morning run (trends & stops)STEADY
  • 9:45–3:45Quick — checks every 30 minutesQUICK
  • 12:30 ETSteady — midday run · Bargain checks a few times a daySTEADY
  • 3:30 ETSteady — late-day runSTEADY
  • 4:00 ETUS market closes

Every bot run logs a report to its page — if a bot's page stops updating on a weekday, that itself is the warning sign.

🔄 Why isn't the Real money page live?

The bot pages update themselves every time a bot runs (see the schedule). The Real money page works differently: it shows the last saved snapshot of your Robinhood balances — it is not a live feed and does not refresh by itself.

  • Why: for safety, the website is not allowed to talk to Robinhood directly. The numbers travel Robinhood → the AI assistant → our database → this page.
  • For now: that middle step has to be triggered — the numbers update when the AI is asked to refresh them. So a trade you make today shows up after the next refresh, not the instant it happens.
  • The fix we're building: an always-on link so the real balances update on their own through the day. Until then, each real-money tile shows an "as of" time — that timestamp tells you how fresh the number is.

🤖 Why a system, not me

 Me doing itThis system
EmotionPanic-sells, gets greedyFeels nothing — follows the rules
The stop-lossEasy to forget or moveAlways on, every holding
ConsistencyMood & news change my mindSame rules every single run
TimingMiss it if busy/asleep/travellingRuns on schedule no matter what
RecordIn my headEvery decision and order logged on these pages
CapitalBet on a hunchReal dollars only follow proof, in capped steps

The golden rule: real money follows proof, in small capped steps — never hope. Before a strategy earns its next dollar it has to beat simply holding the S&P 500 (after costs), with its safety rules working correctly. And the off switch on the AI Control page beats everything else — flip it and all AI trading stops.