Quick start

Sir Trades A Lot is an autonomous options & equities trading bot. It scans a watchlist, forecasts each name, has a panel of AI judges vote on every trade, sizes and places the order on your Schwab account, then manages and closes it — all on its own. This guide explains every part of the system.

Real money. Once you switch an engine to PRODUCTION, it places real orders on your brokerage account. Everything starts in dry-run (previews only). Practice with paper trading before you risk a cent.

Your first 10 minutes

  1. Sign up. The very first account on a server becomes the platform owner (admin) and owns the existing bot. Every later sign-up gets its own fully isolated workspace — separate account, positions, money, and secrets.
  2. Finish the setup wizard (/setup, three steps): (1) create your own Schwab developer app and paste its App Key + Secret, (2) Connect Schwab — sign in and paste the redirect URL, (3) add one AI Roundtable judge (a provider preset + API key). A "Finish setup" banner shows on every page until all three are done.
  3. Everything is yours & encrypted. Your Schwab keys/token and LLM keys live in your own encrypted vault. There are no shared server keys and no other user can ever see your account.
  4. Turn on paper trading (Settings → Paper trading): pick a fake balance and the bot trades real market data with no real orders — the safe way to learn and tune.
  5. Build your watchlist (Settings → Watchlist): add tickers/ETFs and categories (e.g. pharma) the AI expands into liquid names. One shared list feeds every engine. See Watchlist.
  6. Set your risk knobs: capital-per-trade cap, daily open limits (0 = unlimited), the confidence gate, and the risk-profile slider.
  7. Watch it run in paper / dry-run. Everything previews and records but places no real orders. When you are confident, flip an engine to PRODUCTION yourself.

The big idea

Out-of-sample testing found that no forecaster reliably beats an always-long baseline at calling direction. So the durable edge here is premium harvesting — selling options (the wheel, PMCC, defined-risk credit spreads) and collecting the volatility risk premium. The forecaster and the AI Roundtable act as a filter and risk manager, not a crystal ball. Keep that framing in mind as you read the rest.

How the bot works →