FAQ
Straight answers
Everything below is the same answer you would get from a person. If your question is not here, send it and we will answer it and probably add it.
58 questions across 7 categories. The uncomfortable ones are in here too — what has never been tested against a real venue, what is switched off pending counsel, and what happens to your money if you cancel.
The product
What PTQ is, who it is for, and what the one subscription holds.
8 questions
What is PTQ?
A strategy workbench for people who trade their own account around a day job. You write your trading rules; PTQ backtests them on real historical bars, runs the overfitting statistics allocators use, and paper trades the survivors. Live trading exists only on your own machine, behind an arm step you click yourself.
Who is PTQ for?
People with a day job who trade their own account and want their ideas stress-tested before risking money on them. PTQ is software, not advice. We are not a broker and we never manage your money.
Is this a signals service?
No. PTQ never tells you what to trade. You author your own strategy; the product backtests it, validates it and paper trades it. Live trading runs on your own machine, behind an arm step you click yourself.
Do I need to be a programmer?
No. Strategies are written as explicit rules in the builder — entries, exits, sizing, risk — not as code. Teaching scaffolds show the shape of a complete strategy, and the strategy you run is one you wrote.
What does the subscription include?
Everything PTQ does, on one plan: the hosted platform with the strategy builder, backtesting, the validation gate and paper trading with clearly labelled simulated fills; the PTQ OS on your own machine; the Claude connector; the Pine export; and live trading behind the arm step. Compute and support chat are metered by a credit allowance included in the plan.
What are the two halves — hosted platform and local OS?
The hosted platform runs in your browser and does the research: building, backtesting, validation, paper trading. The PTQ OS is a copy you install on your own computer, and it is the only place broker keys and live execution exist. Both come with the one plan, and the licence covers the machines you actually use rather than a single seat.
Why are there no testimonials on the site?
Because we do not have real ones yet. When members say things worth quoting, with permission, they will appear. Nothing on this site is invented — that includes the praise.
Where do I start once I have paid?
The how it works page walks the whole route in order: download the OS, verify the checksum, run the installer, activate the device with your licence key, connect a broker if you want one, then build or clone a strategy. Nothing later in that list works until the step before it does, on purpose.
Quant mechanics
The maths inside: the validation gates, the optional module library, simulation mode and the review loop.
12 questions
Will PTQ make me money?
We make no promises about performance, and you should distrust anyone who does. PTQ's job is the opposite: to show you, with the statistics allocators use, when a strategy's backtest is likely overfit. Most strategies fail that test.
What is the probability of backtest overfitting?
A published statistic (Bailey, Borwein, López de Prado & Zhu, 2017) that estimates how likely it is that your backtest's performance came from fitting noise rather than finding signal. Try enough variations of a rule and one will look brilliant by luck; PBO estimates how much of that luck you are looking at.
What is the deflated Sharpe ratio?
A correction to the ordinary Sharpe ratio (Bailey & López de Prado, 2014) that accounts for how many things you tried, selection bias and non-normal returns. A raw Sharpe from a backtest flatters; the deflated version asks whether it would still stand after the flattery is removed.
What is the out-of-sample holdout?
Part of the history is held back while you design your rules, and your strategy is scored on that unseen data. In-sample brilliance counts for nothing here — the split is shown on every run.
Why do most strategies fail the gate?
Because most backtests are accidentally tuned to the past. Look-ahead, survivorship, parameters fitted to noise — the gate exists to catch these before money is involved. A strategy that fails gets told why. That most fail is the product working, not a defect.
Can I trade a strategy that failed the gate?
The gate's verdict is always computed and always shown — you see it before anything trades. PTQ's whole design pushes the honest path: paper first, live only on your machine after you explicitly arm it. The verdict exists so that decision is an informed one.
What is the quant mechanics library?
A set of optional modules, each implementing a published piece of quantitative-finance research, that act on YOUR strategy — testing it harder and sizing it more carefully. The first batch: purged cross-validation with an embargo, a walk-forward degradation gate, a trading-cost budget measured in Sharpe units, error bars around your Sharpe ratio, a mean-reversion half-life measurement, a stationarity check, and a Monte Carlo drawdown distribution with a ruin bound. Each one cites the literature it comes from, and its panel states what it costs you as well as what it gives you. None of them is a strategy, and turning one on is not a promise about returns — several exist precisely to make your results look worse and more honest.
How does a module get into the product?
Through one registry, not one page of copy. Each mechanic is a single entry that names its parameters, their floors and caps, the research it implements and its plain-English explanation of the upside and the downside. The configuration screen and the learn panel are generated from that entry, so a panel cannot describe something the code does not do. Every new mechanic ships switched off; you turn it on and see the difference yourself.
What is Simulation Mode?
You run your SAME strategy through backtest and validation under two or more rule settings — say, with and without volatility-targeted sizing — and see the honest difference on the same past data: overlaid equity curves, every metric and validation gate side by side, and a "what changed" list built from the actual firing journal, so every claimed difference traces to a recorded event. Nothing is sorted by return, a lower return with better validation is presented as the trade-off it is, and every page of it is badged as a historical simulation. It shows what a rule setting did to the past; it does not predict what it will do next.
What is the review loop?
A report over your own trading record. It reads your order journal for the window you ask about and answers four questions from real rows only: what happened, why (the engine's per-trade attribution — signal, regime, slippage, which rules fired), what the gates said at the time, and what you might try next. The suggestions arrive as ready-made Simulation Mode comparisons you can run. It never adopts anything: the module has no write path, so producing a report leaves your strategy and your standing arm byte-identical.
What happens to the review if the engine is offline?
It tells you. The journal half still renders because that is local, and the attribution and drift halves come back marked unavailable, carrying the engine's own reason. No statistics block is composed to fill the gap. The same rule holds across the product: real, or honestly empty.
Do the modules ever change my strategy on their own?
No. Nothing self-modifies. The drift monitor flags; the Kelly module recommends, and refuses to recommend at all when your own data cannot rule out having no edge. Every adoption is an edit you make to your own profile or strategy — and any such edit invalidates a standing arm, so a running loop cannot inherit a change you did not re-consent to.
Execution and brokers
Paper versus live, the honest status of the live path, and which venues exist today.
10 questions
How does paper trading work?
Paper orders route to Alpaca's paper API — US equities, simulated fills — and every fill is labelled simulated, everywhere it appears. Paper is where a strategy proves it behaves outside a backtest.
How does live trading work?
Live runs through the PTQ OS installed on your own computer, with your own broker keys, and nothing goes live until you explicitly arm it, strategy by strategy. Today the live path is an experimental single-shot Alpaca order path, never tested against the live venue; automated execution, multi-broker support and production execution safety do not exist today.
Has a real live order ever been placed through PTQ?
Not yet, and we will not pretend otherwise. The Alpaca adapter is written and its refusal paths are tested, but no order has been sent to the venue in live mode. Paper trading is the part we can show you working today. When the first live order goes through against the venue, this answer changes and says so.
Why is live trading local-only?
Because your keys should never leave your machine, and because a live order should require a human. The hosted platform never holds broker keys; the arm step happens in front of you.
What checks does an order pass before it reaches a broker?
One choke point, the same for paper and live, from every surface — the app, the command line and the Claude connector. In order: the kill switch, your explicit confirmation, the per-trade risk verdict (which can block the order or trim it), your profile's live permission, whether a broker is actually configured, the arm state and its one-time token, and the portfolio authority — gross exposure, per-symbol cap, open positions, the daily loss halt, the max-drawdown stop, orders per day. Then a fresh quote: if the price has moved past the plan's limit, the order refuses rather than chases. Every attempt lands in the journal, including the refusals.
Which brokers and markets?
Paper trading routes through Alpaca today — US equities. We list integrations after they work, not before, so the integrations page is short and true. Crypto exchange connectors are built but switched off pending a compliance answer, so treat them as available when enabled, not as running.
Does PTQ trade unattended while I sleep?
On paper, yes. You can arm a strategy and let the loop run it on a schedule — every order still going through the same risk checks a manual order does. Unattended live trading is switched off in this build; the loop runs paper only until that changes. We would rather tell you that plainly than sell you a phrase like set-and-forget.
What is the autopilot control panel?
One screen for the unattended loop. It shows every armed strategy — its scope, expiry and whether each order still needs your say-so — the loop's state, and each cycle's per-strategy outcome with the engine's own reason: what it opened, held, or blocked, every paper fill labelled simulated. From it you arm a strategy, disarm one, pause the loop, or hit a global kill switch that stops everything server-side. Stopping is always one click, from anywhere, with no confirmation. Arming never is.
How do I arm a strategy for the loop?
Deliberately, and on your own machine. You pick the scope and an expiry, see the exact risk profile the loop will hold you to, and type a confirmation bound to that one strategy. A web page can't do it for you — the arm step only runs locally, behind that explicit confirm. Unattended live stays gated off in this build regardless, so an armed strategy runs paper until the compliance switch is turned on.
What does the kill switch actually do?
It stops every submission. Engaging it needs no licence check at all — a safety brake you cannot be locked out of is the whole point — and while it is engaged every order, paper or live, is rejected at the choke point. Releasing it does go back through the licence gate, because turning the brake off is the direction that widens what can happen.
Connector and routines
The Claude MCP connector, scheduled routines, charts and the TradingView export.
6 questions
What is the Claude MCP connector?
A connector that lets Claude talk to the PTQ OS on your machine over the Model Context Protocol, so you can ask about your strategies, runs and results in plain English. It reads what you ask it to read. It cannot arm a strategy, place a live order, change enforcement or reach a broker key — those tools do not exist on the connector's surface at all, so there is no argument you or anyone else could pass to reach them.
Can a message trick the connector into unlocking the product?
No, and it has been attacked deliberately to check. Entitlement is read from the signed licence on the device, never from anything a tool call carries, so hostile arguments — a fake lease, a claimed admin token, a credit count, an instruction to ignore prior instructions — get stripped by the schema and ignored by the handler. The paper-order tool has no live parameter to set. The activation tool cannot mint a licence, because the licence server is the only authority that issues one.
Can PTQ send me scheduled updates?
Yes, through routines — and only the ones you explicitly say yes to. A routine is a real scheduled job on your machine that reads your actual portfolio, journal or validation results and delivers an update as a notification. Updates are composed with the Claude CLI on your machine, on your own Claude usage (without it you still get a plain notification). Every routine is listed, and deleting or switching one off removes its scheduled job completely.
What happens to a routine when I switch it off?
The scheduled job goes away, not just the row in the list. Disabling or deleting a routine removes the operating system's own scheduler entry, and a check of the scheduler afterwards shows nothing left behind. Switching it back on recreates it with the run time your device chose, not a new one invented on the server.
Does PTQ have its own charts?
Yes. Candlestick charts of real market bars, with your strategy's entries, exits, stops, targets and in-position periods drawn on top — computed by the same engine that runs your backtests, so the chart and the backtest can never disagree. If the engine is offline the chart says so; nothing is ever simulated to fill the gap.
Can I see my strategy on TradingView?
Yes, one way: PTQ charts natively; export a Pine v6 study to see your signals on a TradingView chart. Pine runs only there — execution and risk stay in PTQ. The export is a study, not a strategy script: it plots signals and never places an order, and a strategy the engine itself would refuse is refused at export with the reason rather than approximated.
Billing
Price, what is issued when, cancellation, refunds and availability.
7 questions
What does it cost?
$997 a year, one plan, everything in it. Nothing is issued before payment: no licence key, no credits, no access.
Is there a cheaper tier or a trial?
No. There is one plan and no tier beneath it, and nothing is issued before payment — no licence key, no credits, no product access. What we do instead is describe exactly what the software does and does not do, on this site, before you spend anything, and publish the refund terms next to the price.
Why annual only?
Because the workflow is slow on purpose. Build, validate, then paper trade for weeks before anything is live. Monthly billing sells impatience; a year matches how the product is meant to be used.
What happens if I cancel?
You keep access until the end of the period you paid for, then the account stops opening the product. Your data stays yours; export and deletion are built in and are never behind the paywall.
Can I get a refund?
UK consumers get the statutory 14 days, and nothing beyond it: cancel inside that window and the hosted service is refunded for the days you have not used, while the right to cancel the downloadable software ends once you download or activate it — you confirm that separately at checkout. There is no goodwill refund scheme on top. The refund policy sets it out in full; read it before you buy.
Is PTQ available where I live?
Availability is confirmed at checkout based on your jurisdiction. If we cannot serve your region, checkout says so before any money moves.
How does payment actually work?
One payment of $997, in USD, through Stripe, covering a year. Card details go to Stripe and never touch our servers. Your licence key is minted by the payment webhook, not by signing up, which is why creating an account gives you nothing until the payment clears.
Security and data
Where broker keys live, what the licence gate does, what we hold and what you can take away.
8 questions
Do you hold my broker keys or my money?
No and no. Broker keys live on your machine and never reach our servers. Your money stays at your broker. The hosted platform holds neither.
Where exactly are my broker keys stored?
In your operating system's own secret store on the machine that runs the OS: the login Keychain on macOS, DPAPI on Windows, the Secret Service on Linux. If none of those is available the keys fall back to a file in your PTQ home directory with owner-only permissions, and the product tells you which store it actually used rather than the one it would prefer. Secret values are never logged, never returned by any status call, and never placed on a command line where another process could read them.
How do you make sure a key is never sent to you by accident?
The hosted service refuses it. The credential surface there stores metadata only — provider, label, scopes, a short mask — and a request carrying a field that looks like a secret is rejected outright with an error telling you keys stay on your machine. The routes that do handle real keys exist only on your own machine and refuse any request that did not come from that machine.
What do you actually hold about me?
Your account details through our authentication provider; the strategies you create and their configuration; risk profiles and settings; paper trades, which are simulated fills; backtest and validation results; a usage log of which features you used and what credits you spent; your declared jurisdiction and the acknowledgements you ticked; and support tickets or chat conversations. Payment records come back from Stripe as name, email, amount and their identifiers. That is the list, and it is the same list the privacy policy carries.
How does the licence check work?
Your device activates against the licence server with your key and gets back a short-lived signed lease — Ed25519, signed with a key that only ever exists on the server, valid for a few days and tied to that one device. The OS verifies that signature and its expiry on every gated request, so an edited or hand-made lease simply fails. Metered work like a backtest is charged against a credit balance the server holds and decrements, which means a copy of the software running away from the server cannot spend anything.
What can PTQ never do?
Move your money, trade on your behalf without you arming it, or see your broker credentials. There is no route on the hosted platform that arms live trading, no connector tool that can, and no request body field that grants it. Arming happens on your machine, behind an explicit confirmation, with a scope and an expiry you set — and any edit to your risk profile or mechanics invalidates a standing arm.
Can I export or delete my data?
Yes, and neither is behind the paywall — cancelling never holds your work hostage. Export gives you your account, strategies, profiles, routines and arm records. Deletion removes them, and it cascades: nothing is left orphaned to be quietly reactivated later.
Is the download signed?
Not yet. Code signing needs a developer account we have not set up, and until it does, the honest integrity story is the published checksum: you verify the archive against it before you install, and the install notes explain what your operating system will say about an unsigned build. We would rather write that here than let you find out at the Gatekeeper prompt.
Jurisdiction and regulation
What PTQ is in regulatory terms, where it can be sold, and what protections do not apply.
7 questions
Is PTQ investment advice?
No. PTQ is education and software tooling; it holds no opinion on markets and never recommends a trade. The strategies it tests are yours. If you want advice tailored to your circumstances, that is a regulated service we do not provide.
Are you regulated by the FCA?
No. PTQ is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and does not carry on regulated activities. Because we are not an authorised firm, the protections available to customers of authorised firms — the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme — do not apply here. If you want a regulated adviser, check them on the FCA register first.
What is the consent gate at signup?
Before you use the trading features you confirm which jurisdiction you are in and acknowledge that PTQ is education and tooling rather than investment advice, that simulated results do not reflect real execution, that most strategies fail the validation gate by design, and that live trading runs on your own machine at your own responsibility. We record what you ticked and when.
Why does availability depend on where I live?
Because the rules that govern selling this kind of software differ by country, and we would rather block a sale than make one we cannot stand behind. Checkout confirms your jurisdiction and stops before taking money if we cannot serve your region. Giving false information to get around that block breaches the terms.
Why does this site make no performance claims?
Because we sell to UK retail traders and because the claims would be dishonest anyway. No screenshot on this site is a mock-up, no number is invented, and nothing here promises what a strategy might make.
Are the legal documents final?
The terms, privacy policy, cookie policy and refund policy are published in full and each states its own status and effective date at the top — read it there. They were written in-house and are with a UK solicitor for review; where a question is genuinely still open, such as how a subscription that mixes a hosted service with downloadable software is treated under the cancellation rules, the document says so instead of hiding it.
What happens to my data?
Your strategies and runs are yours. Export and deletion are built in and are never behind the paywall, so cancelling never holds your work hostage. The privacy policy has the details, and the security page has the plain-English version.
Longer answers
Four questions deserve more than an accordion row, so they have their own pages.
Not answered here?
Send the question. A person reads it, answers it, and if it is a question other people will have, it ends up on this page with your wording rather than ours. Before you buy, that includes questions we have to answer with a no.
PTQ
Still deciding?
Everything the product does is described on this site before you spend anything. If the gate kills your strategy, it just saved you money.