Things people ask.
The awkward ones first. If an answer here reads like a hedge, it's because the honest answer is a hedge — and we'd rather say so than sell past it.
About your money and risk
Whose money is at risk — mine?
Never yours. The operator — the person running the bot — puts their own capital behind the exact same signals you see, starting small, on the first trading day of January 2027, and only after a public, externally-anchored paper-trading record you can audit. You're not signing anything that touches your account. You're not "going live" with us. We go live; you get to watch.
Will the bot trade for me?
No. Signals are informational — you decide what to do with them. Your account is yours; we never touch it. A webhook is available if you want to wire it into your own broker, but that's your call and your risk.
What happens when a signal doesn't work?
It's in the weekly digest — results by regime, the gates that fired, the signals that went the wrong way. We surface the misses; we don't bury them. Forward testing exists to spot exactly this kind of pattern before the operator's own capital is exposed. The public record shows the settled calls, losses included.
About the signals
What does the bot actually trade — stocks, options, or both?
It evaluates both — and the options side carries a validation warning. The signal pipeline (EMA crossover, ADX regime, RSI, ATR, volume confirmation) decides everything. For each name that passes the gates, the bot stages an equity setup for a swing-style position. It also evaluates directional calls and puts on the same signals. TradeBotAlpha has not validated any options strategy. Its tests of long calls/puts and debit spreads did not pass its go-live criteria. The call and put setups in the 8 AM digest are scan output, published with that status. Equity signals stream into your in-app feed in real time as they fire.
How often will I get signals?
The daily digest lands at 8:00 AM ET on trading days — about 90 minutes before the open — with the ranked shortlist. Live signals also appear in real time on your in-app feed as the bot generates them. Quiet days are real: if nothing clears the gates, the digest says so.
Why "Alpha" in the name, if you don't claim to have alpha?
Two reasons. It's the software kind of alpha — this is an early build, improving in public, and we've never pretended otherwise. And it's a standing reminder of the bar we hold ourselves to: we measured our own alpha with professional-grade statistics — including re-testing against point-in-time data with the delisted companies put back in — found none we could prove, and told you. The day that changes, you'll see it in the data before you see it in our marketing.
I already follow a TradingView / Discord / X signal source. Why this?
Most signal sources don't tell you why a setup made the list, what filters were applied, or what didn't make it and why. This one does. If you find that boring, you'll find this boring too — it's the whole point.
About access and price
When does this become paid?
Not during the private beta — it's free while we forward-test through 2026. Paid tiers arrive at the January 2027 public launch. You'll get 30 days' notice before any pricing change to your account, and the choice to convert or opt out. No advance commitment.
Why is access by request?
Quality of the feedback loop matters more than size of audience right now. Reviewing each request one at a time means we read every reply, follow up on every strange signal report, and ship the right things faster. The bar drops as we approach the public launch.
The limits, stated up front.
This is the section most services don't write. It's the one we'd want to read.
No proven edge on raw return
Today's signals are built on price and trend — a well-understood approach. We've tested the obvious ways to add an edge, including against point-in-time data that puts the delisted companies back in, and documented every failure. We won't claim an edge we haven't earned.
Risk first, by design
In a roaring bull market a simple index fund may out-return us. Our aim is a smoother ride and a process you can trust, not chasing every last point of upside. If beating the market on raw return is your only goal, a low-cost index fund is hard to beat, and we won't pretend otherwise.
A short record, honestly labelled
The public record is paper, delayed and settled — and where the sample is too small to call an edge, the page says so next to the number instead of letting a wide confidence interval read as a result.
If a durable edge exists for a platform like this, it most likely lives in independent, non-price information — news and sentiment, real financial-statement fundamentals, volatility and macro regime, or market-neutral pairs. All of that is on the research roadmap, and the commitment is the same discipline as everything else: we ship a new edge only after it proves itself out-of-sample — never before. If one is validated, we'll say so plainly, backed by evidence.
In a field full of hype, being the platform that under-claims and over-documents is the product.
Still have a question?
Ask it in the access request — the operator reads every one, and an awkward question is a good sign.