Frequently asked questions

Is Tactfolio free?#

Yes. The Free plan is free for good: it builds five strategies a day and backtests each one as often as you like, opens and backtests the classic and Discover strategies, shows premium ones as backtests, and runs 10 AI assistant backtests a day. Every strategy it saves is shared with the community on Discover. Plus costs $12 a month or $108 a year and adds unlimited building, private strategies, premium strategies, paper trading and one live strategy. Pro is $29 a month or $261 a year. Plus and Pro start with a 14-day free trial. See pricing.

Is this investment advice?#

No. Tactfolio is a research tool. It shows how rules would have behaved on past prices. It doesn’t recommend what to buy, and past results don’t predict future ones. That includes the classic strategies and everything in Discover: they are other people’s rules, shown honestly, not endorsements.

Can I trade from Tactfolio?#

Yes, on Plus and Pro. A paper account in Trade runs one of your strategies with pretend money at real market prices and emails you a summary after each close. You can also connect your own Alpaca account, paper or live, with your own API keys: the strategy then trades real orders with the part of the account you give it, and never touches anything else you hold there. See paper trading and Alpaca trading for how each works.

Do I need an account?#

Not to look around: the builder’s starter patterns, the classic strategies, Discover, and every public strategy’s page are open to everyone. You need a free account to build and save strategies, copy or star public ones, publish, or connect an AI assistant.

Who can see my strategies?#

Only you, and any AI assistant you connect, until you publish. On the Free plan, every strategy you save is shared with the community on Discover, so saving one publishes it. Strategies you kept private before stay private until you save changes to them. A published strategy’s versions are public and permanent: anyone can view and copy them. Your unpublished changes stay private even after you’ve published. See Publishing and sharing.

Can I delete a strategy?#

If you’ve never published it, yes, from your workspace. A published strategy can’t be deleted, because other people’s copies and strategies may depend on it, but you can retire it from Discover.

Can I use someone else’s strategy?#

Yes. Copy any public strategy to your account and change it, or use it as a building block inside your own with a Strategy block. Either way, the original author keeps the credit. See Build on someone else’s work.

Why are my results different from another backtesting site’s?#

Small assumptions add up. The usual differences:

• Trade timing. Tactfolio trades at the same day’s close as its signal. Some sites trade the next day instead, which the Next-day open line approximates.
• Costs. Tactfolio charges 5 basis points on every trade, the same for every strategy; some sites charge nothing.
• Sharpe ratio. Tactfolio’s main Sharpe doesn’t subtract a risk-free rate. Compare other sites’ Sharpe with the over T-bills figure.
• Lookbacks. A “10-month” average can mean ten month-end closes or about 210 trading days. Tactfolio does both; check which your rule uses.
• Dividends. Tactfolio’s prices include reinvested dividends. Charts of raw prices, such as most broker charts, don’t. The dividend calculator shows how much reinvesting adds over the years.
• Dates. A backtest starts once every ticker and reading has history, which may be later than you expect.

Where do the prices come from?#

Tactfolio uses daily prices for US-listed stocks and funds, adjusted for splits and dividends, and US economic data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. What a backtest simulates covers the data and its limits.

Can a strategy sell short or use leverage?#

It can’t sell short or borrow. It can hold leveraged and inverse funds like any other fund, using their real price history.

Why does my backtest start later than I asked?#

A backtest can only start once every ticker in it has prices and every reading has enough history to calculate: a 12-month return needs a year of prices first. For some young funds, the Simulated history option extends the history further back; see Simulated history.

How is Discover ordered?#

By the Tactfolio Score, from 1 to 100. It discounts what a backtest may owe to hindsight, then compares every public strategy on expected risk-adjusted return, growth, and return for its drawdowns: 100 means no other strategy is expected to beat it on all three. See How the Tactfolio Score works.

Which AI assistants work with Tactfolio?#

Any assistant that supports remote MCP servers with OAuth sign-in. Setup steps for the ones we’ve checked are in Use Tactfolio from your AI assistant.

I created an account but can’t sign in. Why?#

Open the link we emailed you when you signed up: it finishes creating your account and signs you in. Until then, signing in says the email or password is wrong. No email? Check your spam folder, or choose Resend link on the page that asked you to check your email (signing up again with the same address works too).

I forgot my password. How do I get back in?#

Choose Forgot password? on the sign-in page and enter your account’s email. We send a link that works once, for one hour; the new password you choose with it signs you out on your other devices. If no email arrives, check your spam folder, or write to us from Support. To change a password you know, use Settings.

How do I get help or report a problem?#

Write to us from Support: it’s in the main menu, and you don’t need to be signed in. Members see their requests and our replies there; everyone gets our reply by email.