Home/Legal
Risk Disclaimer
Read this before installing or using Ascent Trading Systems. It is part of the Software License Agreement, and by using the software you confirm that you have read, understood and accepted it.
A research model, not a trading service. The software is a research, simulation and educational model. It does not promise, guarantee or imply wins, profits or any result. From the moment you buy it, all responsibility for how you use it, including any live trading, and for every gain and loss falls on you alone (License Agreement section 1.5).
Not investment advice. Ascent Trading Systems LLC is not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, commodity trading advisor or financial planner, and is not registered with the SEC, FINRA, the CFTC or any state securities regulator. The software, its documentation, our website and any support we give are for education and research only. Nothing in them is a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy, sell or hold any security, or a statement that any strategy or trade is suitable for you. Talk to a licensed financial professional before making investment decisions.
No adviser-client relationship. The software is a general-purpose tool, the same for every buyer and not tailored to anyone's financial situation, goals or risk tolerance. Buying or using it does not make us your adviser or fiduciary. We do not see, monitor or control your accounts or your trades.
Trading involves substantial risk of loss. You can lose some or all of the money you trade. Only trade money you can afford to lose. Leveraged and options trading can lose more than you put in.
Options. Options trading is not suitable for everyone and carries special risks. Before trading options, read "Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options", available from your broker and from the Options Clearing Corporation.
Day trading. Frequent trading can trigger broker and regulatory rules (such as FINRA's pattern day trader rule), extra costs and tax consequences. You are responsible for knowing and following the rules that apply to your account.
No results are promised or implied. The software ships with no track record. It is a framework you configure, test and validate yourself. Any examples, screenshots or numbers on our website or in the documentation, including the website demo, come from simulated markets or from the hypothetical backtests that ship with the software: illustrations, not results.
Backtests and paper results are hypothetical. HYPOTHETICAL OR SIMULATED PERFORMANCE RESULTS HAVE CERTAIN INHERENT LIMITATIONS. UNLIKE AN ACTUAL PERFORMANCE RECORD, SIMULATED RESULTS DO NOT REPRESENT ACTUAL TRADING. ALSO, SINCE THE TRADES HAVE NOT ACTUALLY BEEN EXECUTED, THE RESULTS MAY HAVE UNDER- OR OVER-COMPENSATED FOR THE IMPACT, IF ANY, OF CERTAIN MARKET FACTORS, SUCH AS LACK OF LIQUIDITY. SIMULATED TRADING PROGRAMS IN GENERAL ARE ALSO SUBJECT TO THE FACT THAT THEY ARE DESIGNED WITH THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT. NO REPRESENTATION IS BEING MADE THAT ANY ACCOUNT WILL OR IS LIKELY TO ACHIEVE PROFITS OR LOSSES SIMILAR TO THOSE SHOWN. IN FACT, THERE ARE FREQUENTLY SHARP DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HYPOTHETICAL PERFORMANCE RESULTS AND THE ACTUAL RESULTS LATER ACHIEVED BY ANY PARTICULAR TRADING PROGRAM. HYPOTHETICAL TRADING, INCLUDING PAPER TRADING, DOES NOT INVOLVE FINANCIAL RISK, AND NO HYPOTHETICAL TRADING RECORD CAN COMPLETELY ACCOUNT FOR THE IMPACT OF FINANCIAL RISK IN ACTUAL TRADING. THE ABILITY TO WITHSTAND LOSSES OR TO STICK TO A PARTICULAR TRADING PROGRAM IN SPITE OF TRADING LOSSES ARE MATERIAL POINTS WHICH CAN ALSO ADVERSELY AFFECT ACTUAL TRADING RESULTS. Backtests and paper trading cannot fully model real-world costs, slippage, liquidity, delays or your own decisions. Past performance, real or simulated, does not predict future results.
Software can fail. Bugs, outages, data errors, broker or internet problems, configuration mistakes and hardware failures can cause missed, duplicated or wrong orders. Safety features such as loss limits, kill switches and health checks reduce some risks but cannot remove them. Parts of the software were developed with the help of AI tools and, like any software, may contain errors. You are responsible for monitoring the software and your accounts at all times. If the software stops or pauses for any reason, it does not close your open positions or cancel your open orders.
Where the software uses AI, and where it does not. Most of the software is rule-based code: fixed indicators, schedules, thresholds and risk limits, the same in every copy. Two parts use AI:
- The ML Breakout Filter is a machine-learning model (logistic regression plus LightGBM) that we trained once, before release, on historical market data. It is not trained on your data and does not change after you install it. It casts one ordinary vote in the council that reviews new entries, has no veto, and never places or sizes an order. If its model file or the model library is missing, it abstains and the council goes on without it. Like any backtest, it was built with the benefit of hindsight and can be wrong in markets it has never seen.
- The optional Ask the Agents page is off until you add your own Anthropic API key. Then your question, together with a snapshot of the software's own state and logs (which can include your positions, orders, results and settings), is sent to Anthropic's Claude service under your own account and Anthropic's terms. The answers are generated by an AI model: they can be wrong or made up, they only describe what the software recorded, they cannot change settings or place orders, and they are not advice or a recommendation.
"Learning" on our website means small, logged adjustments within fixed limits: the software can lower (never raise) a ticker's ranking after repeated losing trades, and can shift how much weight some opinion voters get based on their recorded accuracy. It never changes position sizes, risk limits, exits, the kill switch or any veto. Nothing on our website or in the software means it predicts the market.
Live trading is real money. The software can send real orders through your own Alpaca live account after its checks pass, you accept the written Live Trading Risk Acknowledgement and you type a confirmation phrase. A Scorecard PASS only means paper trading behaved like the backtest so far. It does not mean the strategy will make money, and markets can behave in ways no backtest or paper period has seen. Start small, watch it closely, and only switch on live trading if you accept that you may lose the money in that account. Changes you make to the code, settings or safety checks are your responsibility.
Your accounts, your decisions. You choose and control your broker and data accounts, your settings, and whether to trade. You are solely responsible for your trading decisions and their results, for any taxes on them, and for following the rules of your broker, data providers and the laws that apply to you.
Forward-looking statements. Anything we say about future features, updates, release dates or prices describes our current plans and may change. It is not a promise, except a price commitment as defined in section 13.1B of the License Agreement, which covers only when prices for new purchases change.
Assumption of risk. By using the software you accept all of the risks described here, and you agree that the limits on our liability in the License Agreement (sections 1.5 and 9 to 11) apply.