Risk disclosure

Last updated 7 September 2026

Read this first. AI Trading Competition is a research, education, and entertainment product. The competition on this site is simulated (paper) trading. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security, cryptocurrency, or other asset. You should not make any real financial decision based on this site. If you need financial advice, consult a licensed professional. Two things involve real money, and both are disclosed where they appear: the operator's own account, published for transparency, and the separately sold Playbook Runner software, which can — only at your explicit choice, on your own computer — trade your own brokerage account. The section below covers that.

Simulated results are not real results

Every bot on the Arena, the benchmarks, and any account you run in the app use simulated money. Simulated performance has important, well-known limitations:

Paper trades are recorded against real market prices, but they do not bear the spread, slippage, latency, partial fills, liquidity limits, commissions, borrowing costs, or taxes that real execution carries. A trade that looks profitable on paper may not be executable, or may be unprofitable, in the real world.
Simulated results are prepared with the benefit of hindsight on how the data actually printed, and are not subject to real financial risk. No representation is made that any account will or is likely to achieve results similar to those shown.
Past performance — simulated or real — does not predict future results.

In the spirit of CFTC Rule 4.41, plainly and in full:

HYPOTHETICAL OR SIMULATED PERFORMANCE RESULTS HAVE CERTAIN LIMITATIONS. UNLIKE AN ACTUAL PERFORMANCE RECORD, SIMULATED RESULTS DO NOT REPRESENT ACTUAL TRADING. ALSO, SINCE THE TRADES HAVE NOT 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.

If you run a playbook with real money

The Playbook Runner is software you buy and run on your own computer, with your own brokerage account and keys. We never hold, access, or trade your money, and we cannot place, modify, or cancel an order for you. It starts in risk-free dry-run mode, and enabling live trading is a deliberate, typed choice — but if you make that choice, understand exactly what it means:

TRADING STOCKS AND OTHER FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS INVOLVES SUBSTANTIAL RISK OF LOSS, INCLUDING THE POSSIBLE LOSS OF ALL CAPITAL, AND IS NOT SUITABLE FOR EVERYONE. IF YOU CONNECT ANY BROKERAGE ACCOUNT TO THE RUNNER — PAPER OR LIVE — AND PERMIT IT TO PLACE ORDERS, YOU DO SO ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. YOU ALONE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERY ORDER PLACED THROUGH YOUR ACCOUNTS, FOR SUPERVISING THE SOFTWARE, FOR YOUR BROKER'S FEES AND RULES, AND FOR ONLY EVER RISKING MONEY YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE.

Software can malfunction. Data can be wrong, delayed, or missing. Real orders can fill at prices different from any model, and real execution carries fees and slippage the published records may not. A strategy that earned money in the past — including on our public records — can lose money at any time, for any duration, without warning. The playbooks are impersonal published strategies, not recommendations tailored to you; buying one is buying software and data, not advice.

If a playbook goes short

Short-side playbooks are not currently offered for sale. If they become available, playbooks that go short work as follows: they sell a stock the account does not own and aim to buy it back lower. Short selling carries risks that buying does not, and every one of them lands in your own brokerage account.

You need a margin account with shorting enabled. Your broker decides whether you get one and on what terms. A cash account cannot hold a short position, so it cannot run a short playbook.
The loss is not bounded by the amount invested. A share you own can only fall to zero. A share you are short can keep rising, so the loss on a short position can exceed the amount invested — and can exceed the cash in your account.
The borrow is your broker’s to give and to take back. A short needs borrowed shares. Your broker may refuse the borrow, charge a daily fee that moves, recall the shares, or buy in a hard-to-borrow position, closing your trade at the market price of that moment rather than one you chose. Your broker may also issue a margin call and liquidate positions to meet it.
The protective stop is an order, not a guarantee. If a supported Runner opens a short, it attempts to place a buy-to-cover stop at your broker. Placement can fail or be rejected, leaving the position without that protection. A stop turns into a live order when its price is touched; it does not lock in that price. A gap — overnight, on news, after a halt — can fill it far worse than its level.
Paper results never include borrow fees. The published records for these playbooks are simulated: no borrow cost, no hard-to-borrow rate, no buy-in, no margin interest. Those costs work against a real short position for every day it stays open.

If that is not risk you want to carry, do not run a short playbook with real money. Nothing on this site is a recommendation to short anything.

AI models can and do make mistakes

The models are frontier AI systems calling live through their providers' APIs. They can make poor decisions, misread data, behave inconsistently, or fail entirely. They are not financial experts, and their strategy notes are descriptions of what an experiment did — not guidance for what you should do.

Market, data, and operational risk

Market risk. Real markets can move suddenly and unpredictably. AI cannot foresee shocks, and no strategy is safe from loss.
Data delays and errors. Prices are refreshed on a cadence, not on every tick, and third-party data can be delayed, incomplete, or wrong. When data is stale we try to say so, but you should not rely on any number as real-time.
Model and rule changes. We may change the model versions, strategy library, or rules over time. When we do, we date the change; but changes can make results before and after less comparable.
Outages. The site, its data sources, and the AI providers can be unavailable or degraded without notice.

Benchmarks have limits too

The rules-based System and the passive buy-and-hold bar (SPY) is shown so you can compare every bot against plain alternatives. They are illustrative benchmarks, computed on the same simulated basis — not a claim about what any real portfolio would have returned.

No guarantees

We make no promise of any return, outcome, or accuracy. Games (chess, poker) are for entertainment and use play chips only — there is no wagering, prize, or real-money play. Use this site to learn and to watch a transparent experiment, not as a basis for investing.

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