How reTrade works
Three parts sit between your AIs and your brokers: your rules, the checker and the record.
A layer in the middle
Connect an AI through reTrade and nothing it sends reaches a broker without passing the check.
- Your AIsClaude, ChatGPT, Grok, AI trading apps, autopilot
- reTradeYour rules, the checker and the record
- Your brokersInteractive Brokers, Questrade and others
Your rules
Write your rules in plain words. reTrade turns each into an exact check, reads it back to you, and applies nothing until you sign. In the reTrade app, you’ll confirm with your fingerprint.
Rulebook
Examples- No more than 15% of my money in any one stock.
- Technology under 25% of everything I own.
- Always keep at least 10% in cash.
- Never sell my MP shares below what I paid ($72.22).
- No risky option bets in my TFSA.
- Any AI order over $5,000 waits for my OK. AIs may move at most $10,000 a day without me.
- Autopilot may only sell or trim, never buy something new.
Changing your rules
- A tighter rule applies at once; a looser one waits 24 hours, so a late-night impulse can’t remove your guardrails.
- No AI can change your rules, only you, so an attacker can’t talk your AI into “raising your limits.”
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.
Account law, built in
The rules that come with your account type run alongside yours, and nobody can sign them away. The engine covers 48 US and Canadian account types, including TFSA, RRSP, FHSA, RESP, RDSP, IRA and Roth IRA, plus a strict default for any account it can’t confirm. Account law is dated and updated every year; when it’s out of date, reTrade opens nothing new.Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.
The checker
Every order from an AI you connect is checked against every rule before it can reach a broker. The answer is one of four, and it names the rule that decided.
- Go ahead
- When it fits all your rules.
- Cut down, from 204 to 6
- To the largest size your rules allow.
- Wait for you
- When it’s big enough to need your OK.
- Stop
- When it breaks a rule outright.
The strongest reason wins
Account law first, then reTrade’s built-in safety rails, then your own rules.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.Missing facts mean stop
No signed rules, an old price, or a stock reTrade can’t match exactly: the answer is stop, never a guess.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.Orders inside your rules don’t wait
They go ahead without a tap. Only orders over your approval line wait for you, and a waiting order holds its place for 3 minutes.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.
The record
Every decision is written down and locked to the one before it by a digital fingerprint, called a hash. Change an old record by even one digit and the chain visibly breaks.
A record holds who asked, for what, which rules were checked, which prices were used and when, and what happened. You own this history, and you can show it to anyone.
- Everyone signs only their own part: the AI signs its request, reTrade signs its decision, and you sign your rules.Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.
- An order is written down before reTrade sends it, so nothing it sends reaches your broker without a record.Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.
- No account numbers go into the permanent record, only your own nicknames for your accounts.Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.
- You’ll be able to check any receipt yourself, offline. The checking tool exists in the engine but isn’t public yet.Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.
- Designed so your own device, or an outside party, keeps a copy of the proof, and an independent timestamp authority dates it.Planned. Plans depend on legal review and broker approvals.
One order, start to finish
It’s 11:47 pm. Claude, connected to your account through reTrade, sees NVDA up 9% and decides to buy $40,000 of it.
Your rule says no stock above 15%. NVDA is already 14.4% of your money, so only 6 more shares fit: the order is cut from 204 shares to 6, about $1,176. That’s under your $5,000 approval line, so it can go without waking you. Everything is recorded.
- When
- Thu Oct 15, 11:47:12 pm
- Who asked
- Claude (Anthropic), on your joint account
- Asked for
- Buy 204 NVDA at market (about $40,000)
- Rule
- R1: no single stock above 15% of your money
- Price used
- $196.00, read 11:47:12 pm (prices are only trusted for 30 seconds)
- Your rules
- version 7f3a19, signed by you on Oct 12
- Signature
- valid
- Decision
- CUT DOWN to 6 shares (about $1,176)
- Asked:signed with Claude’s key
- Decided:signed with reTrade’s key
- Rules:signed with your key
The engine’s demo runs this exact case end to end against a simulated broker, then checks the receipt offline. Nothing was traded.
What can go wrong
An AI is a fast, tireless new employee that nobody has trained, and it can be fooled.
Illustration. reTrade’s engine has a test for this case.
The wrong trade
The wrong stock, amount, direction or account. In March 2020, people trying to buy Zoom Video bought a tiny, unrelated company whose ticker was ZOOM, and the SEC had to suspend trading in it. An AI that guesses a ticker can make the same mistake.
reTrade stops any order for a stock it can’t match exactly. It never guesses.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.Breaking your own limits
You never want more than 15% of your money in one stock. At 11:47 pm, NVDA is up 9%, and the AI buys $40,000 of it.
reTrade cuts the order to the 6 shares your rule allows, and sends only those.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.Running away
An AI gets stuck in a loop and keeps sending orders. In 2012, a software error at Knight Capital sent orders nobody intended, and Knight lost more than $460 million in about 45 minutes. The SEC later fined it for not having proper checks before orders went out.11
reTrade stops a runaway AI, refuses its further requests and caps how much any AI can move in a day.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.Being tricked
Someone hides instructions in a web page or email that the AI reads, and the AI follows them.
reTrade lets your AI ask for orders, but never approve them, change your rules or press Stop. Those powers are yours.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.Tax traps
One AI sells a stock at a loss; another buys it back within 30 days in a different account. In Canada you then can’t claim the loss (the “superficial loss” rule), and the US has the same idea (the “wash sale” rule). Neither AI sees what the other did.
reTrade sees all your accounts, a spouse’s included, and makes the buy-back wait for you. Not tax advice.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.No memory
Brokers keep little history through these AI connections. Interactive Brokers’ trading interface returns only the current day’s trades, and Questrade’s AI connection shows 90 days.4 Nobody keeps why a decision was made.
reTrade keeps a signed receipt of every decision: who asked, what was checked, what happened and why.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.
What exists today is a set of small locks, each on one broker’s door: an approval tab, a tap on your phone, a separate account with a budget, or a spending cap.12 We haven’t found anything that works across all your brokers and all your AIs, and the record belongs to the broker, not to you.
Many AIs, one portfolio
More than one AI can now work on the same money, and each one sees only its own piece.
Robinhood lets customers choose models from OpenAI or Anthropic. Interactive Brokers connects Claude, ChatGPT and Grok to the same account. eToro lets people run AI agent portfolios, and AI trading apps add their own agents on top.5213
Shared limits
If two AIs reach for the last room under your 15% rule, the first gets it and the second is told it’s taken. Each order holds its room the way a hotel holds your credit card, so the same room can’t be spent twice.
In our own test run, four AIs raced for the same stock with 400 orders. The limit was never crossed, and no cash was spent twice.
Clashing moves
If one AI wants to sell NVDA while another wants to buy it, reTrade flags the clash instead of letting you pay fees both ways.
Out-of-date decisions
If an AI decided using holdings that have since changed, because another AI traded, reTrade sends it back to look again.
Who may do what
Each AI gets its own permissions, accounts and limits: one may trade only the TFSA, another may only research. The order of authority is clear: you, then your rules, then autopilot, then any AI.
Tax traps across accounts
reTrade sees a loss sale by one AI and a buy-back by another within 30 days, in any of your accounts, and makes the buy-back wait for you before it costs you.
Credit and blame
reTrade tracks which AI made money and which lost it. In the reTrade app, you’ll switch off the bad one with one tap.
Fast enough to never be in the way
A check that slowed trading down would never be adopted. But checking rules is not where the time goes.
| Step | Typical time |
|---|---|
| The AI deciding what to trade | 2 to 60 seconds |
| A person approving, when needed | 5 to 30 seconds |
| The order traveling to the broker and back | about 20 to 150 thousandths of a second |
| reTrade checking every rule | about 2 ten-thousandths of a second (0.2 ms) |
| reTrade’s whole decision, signed and written down | about 1.5 thousandths of a second (1.5 ms) |
reTrade’s times are medians from our own test run on one machine. The other times are typical ranges.Our own test run, 19 Oct 2026, simulated orders, one machine.
Two design choices keep it that fast
- A running answer to “how much room is left” for every stock, updated whenever a price or holding changes, so a check takes the same time however long your history grows.Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.
- The checker is designed to run inside the AI company’s or broker’s own software, not over the internet, so it adds no travel time and their orders don’t have to be sent to reTrade to be checked.Planned. Plans depend on legal review and broker approvals.
Speed is not the selling point. It’s the reason nobody has an excuse not to use it.
Asked and answered
Is reTrade a broker?
reTrade doesn’t hold your money or your shares, and it never moves money in or out of your accounts. Your accounts stay at your broker.
When live trading is switched on, orders that pass your rules go to your own account at your own broker.
Does reTrade tell me what to buy?
No. reTrade never suggests or starts a trade. It only answers orders that an AI you connected asks for, checked against rules you wrote and signed.
If it helps turn your words into a rule, you read the rule and sign it.
Can an order go through without me?
Yes, if it fits your rules: an order inside them goes ahead without waking you. Anything over your approval line waits for your OK, and anything that breaks a rule is cut down or stopped.
Today nothing reaches a real broker.
Can my AI go around reTrade?
If an AI has its own direct connection to your broker, reTrade can’t block it. That’s why you connect your AIs through reTrade.
When brokers are connected, reTrade will also read your broker’s records and flag trades that didn’t go through it. Planned. Plans depend on legal review and broker approvals.
What if reTrade gets something wrong?
When a fact is missing, such as no signed rules, an old price or a stock it can’t match exactly, reTrade stops. Every decision has a receipt, so you can see what it decided and why.
In our own test run, it agreed with an independent re-check on 20,000 of 20,000 random orders. Our own test run, 19 Oct 2026, simulated orders, one machine.
Is there a guarantee or insurance?
Not today. reTrade doesn’t insure or guarantee anything yet, and we haven’t found an insurer that covers AI trading in people’s accounts.
We plan to offer a guarantee backed by an insurer: if an order we approved breaks your rules, we’d pay. It would never cover a trade that followed your rules and lost money.
Which AIs and brokers does it work with?
Today reTrade’s engine has one connector, not public yet, for AI apps that run a local connector, such as Claude. Orders go to a simulated broker. Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.
ChatGPT and other hosted AIs need a remote connector, which is planned. Interactive Brokers (paper accounts first) and then Questrade are planned too. Planned. Plans depend on legal review and broker approvals.
reTrade isn’t affiliated with any of them.
Who can see my data?
Today’s engine, which isn’t public yet, is built to run as a service on the person’s own computer. Each AI sees only the accounts you grant it, and account numbers never go into the permanent record, only your own nicknames for your accounts.
Your AI company still sees whatever you share with it under its own terms.
How the reTrade app will run isn’t final, and we’ll say exactly where your data lives before it opens.
Does it work in Canada, with a TFSA or RRSP?
It’s built for US and Canadian accounts: account law for 48 account types, including TFSA, RRSP, FHSA, RESP, RDSP, IRA and Roth IRA. The law is dated and updated every year; when it’s out of date, reTrade opens nothing new. It watches for the superficial-loss rule across your household.
It’s for adults 18 and over.
Can I change my rules? What does Stop do?
Change them any time. A tighter rule applies at once, and a looser one waits 24 hours.
Stop freezes every AI at once, drops orders not yet sent and cancels reTrade’s orders already working at your broker. Orders you placed yourself aren’t touched.
What does it cost?
Pricing isn’t set yet. Joining the waitlist is free.
Who is behind reTrade?
Lance Li (Track One Engineering), Mahimn Patel (Applied Mathematics) and Deep Patel (Physics), students at the University of Toronto.