At a glance
Losses can be rapid and substantial. Automation can repeat mistakes faster than a person. Simulation and protective settings do not establish a safe live outcome.
Loss of capital and suitability
Trading can result in loss of all capital committed. Borrowing, derivatives, and short positions may produce losses exceeding the amount initially deposited. Evaluate your financial circumstances, experience, obligations, and ability to bear loss with an appropriately qualified adviser where needed. Do not use money required for essential expenses or assume that automation makes an instrument suitable.
Automation, signals, and execution
Signals can be wrong, late, duplicated, reordered, or absent. Configuration mistakes, replayed webhooks, stale positions, bad market data, provider limits, token expiry, outages, software defects, or compromised access can cause unwanted orders or missed exits. Orders can be rejected, partially filled, or left working. A retry can create a different outcome from the one expected. You must reconcile the platform with broker records.
U.S. equities and trading sessions
Prices can gap and markets can halt. Liquidity, spreads, available order types, and execution quality differ in regular, extended, and overnight sessions. Corporate actions, symbol changes, short-sale restrictions, settlement requirements, and account-specific trading rules can affect instructions. A market order prioritizes execution over price; a limit order may never fill. Session settings do not ensure liquidity or provider availability.
Options: expiration, exercise, and assignment
An option buyer can lose the entire premium and costs, including over a very short period. Time decay, volatility changes, liquidity, contract multipliers, and a wide spread can materially change value. Short options can create large obligations and some uncovered positions have theoretically unlimited loss. Early assignment, automatic exercise, expiration cutoffs, physical or cash settlement, and corporate adjustments can produce unexpected stock or cash exposure.
Multi-leg orders may fill unevenly and leave unhedged exposure. A displayed chain, Greek, or contract selection can be stale or inappropriate. Confirm the exact contract, exercise style, deliverable, and broker permissions. Read the current OCC disclosure supplied by your broker before trading options.
OCC / OIC options disclosure resourcesCrypto assets and exchange risk
Crypto markets often operate continuously and can be exceptionally volatile, fragmented, or illiquid. Exchange outages, insolvency, custody failures, hacks, delistings, stablecoin depegging, network congestion, protocol changes, and legal restrictions can impair value or access. Investor compensation or deposit protections may not apply to a particular asset, venue, or loss. An Algomatex connection does not add insurance or change the venue's custody arrangements.
Leverage, borrowing, and short selling
Margin magnifies losses as well as gains. Brokers can increase collateral requirements, liquidate without waiting for your response, or restrict borrowing. Short positions can incur borrow fees, recalls, buy-ins, and adverse price moves without a fixed loss ceiling. Financing and transaction costs can make an apparently profitable strategy unprofitable. An instrument mentioned here is not necessarily supported by your account or integration.
Stops, pauses, and other safety tools
Stop orders, trailing stops, take-profit instructions, exposure limits, and kill switches reduce some operational risks but cannot eliminate them. Triggers can be delayed, rejected, or execute after a price gap. A subscription pause or software disconnection does not guarantee that every exit remains active, nor does it cancel orders already at the broker. Check and manage open orders and positions directly during any interruption.
Backtests, paper trading, and AI
Backtests and simulation use assumptions and may omit fees, slippage, queue priority, borrowing, liquidity, latency, and real-world rejection or partial fills. Historical selection, overfitting, and hindsight can distort results. AI can fabricate facts or use outdated information. No example, score, forecast, screenshot, or historical result guarantees future performance. Verify factual inputs and make your own decision.
Your practical responsibilities
Understand and test your configuration, monitor connected accounts, protect access, keep direct broker access, and know how to disable a source and cancel orders. Account for taxes, reporting duties, currency conversion, commissions, and data costs. This disclosure describes key risks, not every possible risk, and does not replace your broker's disclosures or professional advice.