BALLAST
Institutional Discipline
Local-first trading terminal · early access
Ballast is an autonomous trading engine wrapped in institutional-grade discipline — 113 explainable rules, circuit breakers, and a tamper-evident decision log — running entirely on your machine, in your own broker account, with your keys. We never see your money, and we never touch it.
First access at launch, in order of boarding. One launch note, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.
The discipline
Institutions don't trade on vibes — they trade inside a risk framework that says exactly when to act, when to wait, and when to stand down. Ballast puts that framework in your hands, with every dial exposed.
Every rule is a slider with hard, code-enforced bounds and a plain-English explainer: what it does, what raising it changes, what lowering it risks. You set the strategy. The engine executes it — and only it.
Every trade — and every trade it refused — is logged with the exact rule and data behind it, in a hash-chained, tamper-evident audit trail you can export. No black box. Ever.
Daily and weekly loss breakers halt all buying until a human releases them. A crisis playbook governs the cash reserve when volatility spikes. Stops and exits keep working no matter what.
Before averaging into a falling position, an AI analyst reads the news and vetoes dips driven by genuinely bad developments — using your own thesis notes as its brief, on your own API key.
Replay your exact settings against real market history, then rehearse with a simulated account before a dollar moves. Hypothetical results are labeled as exactly that — rehearsal, not prophecy.
Ballast runs on your computer. Your broker login happens with your broker. API keys are encrypted at rest on your machine. There is no Ballast server holding your money, your keys, or your data.
How it ships
Download, double-click the launcher, and Ballast sets itself up. Everything — engine, dashboard, database — lives on your computer.
Link your brokerage (Robinhood and Robinhood Crypto today; more brokers on the chart) and your Anthropic API key in a guided setup. Ballast is hard-locked to the one account you pick.
The shipped defaults are a labeled sample — broad index ETFs, nothing exotic. You choose the watchlist, the core holdings, and all 113 rules before anything runs.
Paper trade until the go-live checklist is green. Real orders begin only when you type GO LIVE — and the kill switch is always one file away.
The fleet
The never-brick promise: if your subscription lapses, your bot does not stop protecting you. Exits, stops, and circuit breakers keep working in sustainer mode — you lose updates and feeds, never safety. Pricing shown is planned launch pricing and may change before release.
Straight answers
No, and no promises. Ballast is software — a terminal you configure and control. It executes your strategy; it does not recommend one. Automated trading can lose money, losses can exceed expectations, and no backtest predicts the future. Paper trade first, read the disclosures, and only trade money you can afford to lose.
Never. The engine runs on your machine. Your broker login happens directly with your broker. Your API keys are encrypted at rest locally. Ballast has no server-side access to anything of yours — by architecture, not by policy.
Your bot keeps running and keeps you safe. Sustainer mode means no more updates or premium feeds — but exits, stops, and breakers never switch off. We will not brick a machine that is managing your money.
A Windows PC, a Robinhood account with an agentic-enabled sub-account, and an Anthropic API key (typically pennies per day). Setup is guided and takes about fifteen minutes.
That is the entire point. Watchlist, core holdings, and every one of the 113 rules are yours to set — inside hard safety bounds enforced in code. The shipped defaults are a labeled sample, not a recommendation.