Risk disclosure
Nothing on this platform reduces that risk to zero. Automated execution changes how you lose money, faster, without a human pausing to reconsider. Not whether you can. Allocate only capital you can afford to lose entirely.
This page lists the ways a user of this platform can lose money, grouped by where the risk originates. It is deliberately specific: a general warning that "trading is risky" tells you nothing you can act on.
Market risk
Prices move against you. Every strategy on the platform takes directional or volatility exposure. A rule that worked in a trending market can lose continuously in a ranging one, and nothing in the strategy knows the regime changed.
Gaps skip your stop. A stop-loss is a price level at which the strategy tries to exit. If the market opens below your stop, or a single candle passes through it, you exit at the price available, not at the price you set. On Indian equity this happens at every overnight gap; on crypto it happens on any liquidation cascade. A stop-loss is not a floor on your loss.
Liquidity disappears when you need it. A position sized against normal volume can be untradeable in a stressed market. Wide spreads and thin books turn a modelled exit into a materially worse one.
Circuit limits and halts. An Indian equity locked at a circuit limit cannot be exited. A halted instrument cannot be exited. Your position stays open, marked at the last price, until trading resumes at whatever level it resumes at.
Strategy and model risk
Your rule may simply be wrong. The platform builds what you describe. It does not evaluate whether the idea has merit, and a well-constructed strategy expressing a bad idea loses money efficiently.
Overfitting. If you iterate a strategy until the backtest looks good, you have tuned it to the past. The improvement loop makes this easy to do at scale, 25 rounds of optimisation toward one objective will find a configuration that fits the tested window and may fit nothing else. See Improving a strategy.
Backtest-live divergence. The backtest fills at candle close with a modelled slippage allowance. Live fills carry real latency, real queue position, partial fills and real spread. On short timeframes the difference compounds across hundreds of trades. Every known divergence is listed on Backtest limitations.
Survivorship in the instrument universe. The symbols available are the symbols that exist now. A backtest over a universe does not include instruments that were delisted, suspended or went to zero during the window.
Regime dependence of the test window. All backtests draw on data from 1 January 2024 onward. That window contains particular market conditions. A strategy validated only on it has not been tested against conditions outside it.
Execution and operational risk
Risk limits you did not set do not exist. Seven of the nine execution risk gates are disabled until you configure a value. A strategy with no configured limits will place orders until it runs out of allocated capital. This is the single most consequential operational fact on the platform: see Which limits are on by default.
Risk gates block new entries; they do not close positions. The daily-loss cap, the mark-to-market cap and the consecutive-loss halt all stop new entries. An open position is left to its own stop and target. If you need a position flat, close it.
Stopping a strategy does not flatten it. Pause and Stop prevent new entries. Existing positions run to their exit conditions. To close immediately, use your broker's own interface.
Broker and exchange failure. Rejected orders, expired tokens, API rate limits, venue outages and maintenance windows all prevent a strategy from acting. An exit that cannot be placed is an exposure you still hold.
Session collisions. Interactive Brokers permits one session per username across every IBKR service. Signing in elsewhere takes the session from the platform. See Connect a broker.
Credential and connectivity failure. A revoked API key, a changed exchange IP allowlist or an expired broker token stops order placement mid-strategy, potentially with a position open.
Derivatives risk
Futures and options are available for building, backtesting and paper trading. Live derivative entry is refused by the platform today. When and if it is enabled, the following risks attach and are materially heavier than cash equity or spot crypto:
- Leverage. A margined position can lose more than the margin posted.
- Expiry. An option expires. An unmanaged position at expiry settles or lapses on the exchange's terms, not yours.
- Assignment on short options. A written option can be assigned, creating an obligation in the underlying.
- Lot size granularity. Position sizing is constrained to whole lots, so the smallest position may be larger than your intended risk.
- Margin calls and forced closure. A broker may close your position on a shortfall, at a price you did not choose.
See Derivatives risk disclosure.
Community and published-strategy risk
Listings are a filtered set. Only strategies clearing a minimum live return appear. Strategies that performed worse are not shown. The listing set is not a representative sample of strategies built on Stretus, and the visible aggregate looks better than the underlying population.
A short live history is a short live history. The minimum days-live requirement is seven days by default. Seven days of live trading tells you almost nothing about a strategy's behaviour across regimes.
Past performance of a listing does not indicate future results. A ranking by past return is a ranking by past return.
The author is not accountable to you. A publisher is a strategy author, not your adviser. They have no duty of care to you, no visibility into your account, and no obligation to maintain the strategy.
On some environments, simulated results may be listed. A configuration flag permits publishing from paper deployments and sourcing listing metrics from simulated performance. Where that is on, simulated figures appear in the same fields as live ones. See How listings are selected & ranked.
Platform risk
Software has defects. This platform is under active development. Documented known limitations are named on the relevant pages; undocumented ones exist by definition.
Documentation can lag the product. Where these docs and the product disagree, the product is what runs. Report the discrepancy.
Features can be gated or withdrawn. Capabilities depend on plan entitlements and per-tenant configuration, and can change. See Plans & entitlements.
Acknowledgement
By deploying a strategy with real capital you accept that:
- You authored or reviewed and adopted the rules that will trade.
- You chose the capital allocation and any risk limits, and you understand that limits you did not set are not enforced.
- Losses are yours. Stretus does not indemnify trading losses under any circumstances, including losses arising from platform defects, connectivity failure or venue behaviour.
- Past performance (yours, a backtest's, or a published listing's) does not indicate future results.
Your obligations in more detail: Your responsibilities.