Paper Trading Lab

Public experiment. PAPER ONLY: fake $1,000, no exchange keys, no real orders.
Read first: the research this is based on finds LLM trading agents show no directional edge. Most automated strategies lose after fees. Nothing here is financial advice or a promise of profit.

Paper results vs benchmark

Agent equity
$999.98
Buy-and-hold BTC+ETH
$1,000.72
Start
$1,000

Snapshot taken 2026-10-13 23:23 EDT when this page was built. It is a static snapshot, not a live feed; the agent runs every 30 minutes in its own sandbox and results are refreshed on request. Early numbers are fees and noise only: 0 closed trades, so no win rate or calibration yet.

TimePairSidePriceUSDReason
10-13 23:00BTC-USDbuy$83,581.71$50reflex
10-13 23:05ETH-USDbuy$2,510.66$50reflex

START HERE FIRST

  1. Stay on paper. Run it for weeks. Real money only if it beats buy-and-hold after fees over a long sample (50+ closed trades at minimum), and then start with an amount you can lose entirely.
  2. Never give any AI agent exchange keys that can trade or withdraw. Keep trading code and keys apart from the AI.
  3. Don't use leverage. The paper below found leverage was chosen blind to volatility and 11% of the book held 62% of liquidations.
  4. Check the law where you live (spoofing and wash trading are illegal; see the article).

Architecture: brain and reflex

BRAIN  (slow, offline: research, strategy ideas, code review, nightly review)
   |  proposes parameters; a human approves
REFLEX (every run: state in -> typed decision out)   [today: momentum rule, NOT an AI model]
   |  {action: buy|sell|hold, confidence: 0..1}
RISK LAYER (plain code, owns every limit, can veto the reflex)
   |
PAPER BROKER (simulated fills at live Coinbase prices, 10 bps fee assumed)

The reflex is pluggable. The pasted prompt names Jev (TypeSafe AI) for this role; I have no Jev key and have not tested it, so today it is a simple 1-hour momentum rule with an uncalibrated confidence. Code owns every threshold, size and side effect; the reflex only judges.

Typed decision schema

{"pair":"BTC-USD","action":"buy|sell|hold","confidence":0.0-1.0,"why":"reflex|stop|take_profit"}

State engine

Each run pulls live public data (Coinbase ticker and 5-minute candles for BTC-USD and ETH-USD), builds state (price, last 12 closes, positions, entries, equity, day-start equity), then asks the reflex. Not yet used: funding, open interest, dominance, stablecoin liquidity, macro. Those are in the pasted research brief and are listed as next steps, not built.

Risk layer (code-owned, current values)

RuleValueSource
Max per position / total$50 / $100my choice
Risk budget per trade$0.50, size shrinks as recent volatility risesresponds to paper finding that sizing was volatility-blind
Bracket exits1% stop, 1.5% take-profitlevels are my choice; the paper reports a mechanical bracket recovered +39 bps per position
Daily loss halt$5, then no new entries until next daymy choice
Min confidence to enter0.6my choice
Leveragenonemy choice

Nightly review

Reports equity vs buy-and-hold, trade count, win rate vs average stated confidence (calibration), halts. It refuses to read meaning into fewer than 50 closed trades.

Research layer (plan, mostly not built)

From the pasted brief: judge the market regime (BTC/ETH trend, dominance, stablecoin liquidity, funding, open interest, macro, narrative), then shortlist 5-10 asymmetric setups with supply/unlock, revenue, TVL, holder concentration and confirmed-vs-speculative catalysts. Status: not built. Honest caution: a slow research story is not an edge by itself, and small-cap "asymmetric" tokens are where retail loses most.

Multi-asset plan: crypto, stocks, ETFs, options (design, not built)

Same three layers and the same code-owned risk layer for every asset class. Only the data adapter and broker simulator differ.

Asset classStatusData / fillsExtra rules
Crypto (BTC, ETH)Running (paper)Coinbase public API24/7; fee 10 bps assumed
Stocks and ETFsPlannedSource not chosen. A free key-less quote feed I tried (Stooq) did not work; needs a source, possibly the options desk's feedMarket hours only; no leverage or shorting; per-name and total caps; position limit as % of paper equity
OptionsRun separately by the existing options deskPer that deskExecutable single legs reported separately from hypothetical spreads (the desk's own audit convention); defined-risk only; max premium at risk per trade; no naked short options

Unifying with the options desk (plan): keep its bot untouched. Share only a read-only daily export (equity, open positions, closed trades, label executable vs hypothetical). The lab imports it, shows one combined table per asset class with each one's own benchmark (crypto: BTC+ETH buy-and-hold; stocks/ETFs: SPY buy-and-hold; options: cash), and applies one portfolio-level halt on combined paper drawdown. No shared keys or code.

Real trading (OFF, requires Ade's fresh approval): needs a broker or exchange choice, a hard dollar cap, and trade-only API keys (no withdrawal) entered through a vault link, never in chat. Gate before any of it: weeks of paper results beating the benchmark after fees, 50+ closed trades per strategy, and the paper research's warning that LLM agents showed no edge. Order placement code would stay separate from any AI component.

Options desk and stock sleeves (separate paper bot, 3-week experiment, verdict Nov 2)

Figures supplied by the separate options-desk bot, as of Oct 13, 11:13 PM ET. Not results: two days of data, too short to mean anything. All simulated; never a promise of returns. Data: Yahoo Finance via yfinance (free, about 15-minute delayed quotes, options chains); crypto spot from Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini public APIs. No keys.

SleeveStartValue nowBenchmark / note
Trend sleeve (stocks)$10,000 paper$10,008.83Buy-and-hold $10,016.34
Options sleeve$100 paper (mirrors a $100 budget)$86.50 (cash $30.50 + positions $56.00)Cash = $100
Crypto arbitrage scanner$1,000 paper float0 tradesAll spreads thinner than about 0.66% combined fees

Total paper capital across all bots: $11,100.

Trend sleeve positions (all EXECUTABLE plain buys, Oct 12): AAPL 7.349266 sh @ $340.17; MSFT 4.617573 @ $541.41; NVDA 11.029250 @ $226.67; AMZN 9.555726 @ $261.10. No closed trades. Rules: max 6 positions, volatility-scaled sizing (about $2.5k), 2.5x ATR trailing stop, SPY 200-day regime gate, entry only if price above 50-day average, 20-day momentum positive and RSI below 70; fee $0.005/share.

Options positions:

Options rules: max 2 positions, max 50% of the sleeve risked per trade, $1.15 per side commission (Oct 12 entries were booked at an older $1.50/$3.00 assumption), entries at ask and exits at bid, delta about 0.30, 21-45 days to expiry, open interest at least 100, bid-ask spread at most 20% of mid, implied volatility at most 120%. The $100 sleeve is presumably CAD-ish; currency unconfirmed.

WHAT COULD I BE WRONG ABOUT?

Sources