Frequently asked questions

blank is an autonomous AI trading advisor for Trading 212. It researches stocks, places trades and manages risk on your behalf while the app runs, with no buttons for you to press.

Built by Certified Random. Pay as you go from £10 a trading week, in the UK and EU.

Functionally yes — it places trades autonomously. We use "advisor" because the engine is a large language model reasoning over evidence each cycle, not a hard-coded rule-based bot. Rule-based bots execute the same logic every time. blank looks at what the market is actually doing and decides.

Trading 212 only at launch. It's commission-free in the UK and EU, supports fractional shares, and has a clean REST API. IBKR, Alpaca and Schwab are on the roadmap.

No, and that's the point. blank is for people who don't want to micromanage. The advisor builds its own watchlist, picks what to research, decides what to trade, sizes positions and exits. You can chat with it about why it's doing what it's doing, but you don't pick names.

No. The advisor only runs while the desktop app is open. Close it and it pauses. Open it again and it picks up where it left off.

Leave blank running on your machine and it keeps working the market for you.

With an active plan (a £10 trading week or the monthly subscription) you can still use blank in practice mode — same engine, real market data, virtual £100 sandbox. To go live you need a Trading 212 account, which is free to open in the UK and EU.

One product, two ways to pay. Pay as you go: a one-off £10 buys a 7-day trading week. Weeks stack if you buy more than one, and nothing auto-renews. Monthly: £35 charged in full when you subscribe, covering the next 30 days from that moment, renewing every 30 days until you cancel. There's no proration and no calendar anchoring; your 30 days are your 30 days.

Either way you get the same advisor: unlimited live trading, practice mode, unlimited chat, and research. On top, a flat 5% commission on realised profit — billed on winners only, never on losses. There is no free tier: live trading and practice mode both need an active plan. When a trading week or subscription ends, access runs to the end of that trading day and then stops, and the account stays locked until you buy again.

Full breakdown on the pricing section.

On the last Friday of every calendar month, after market close, as a one-off card charge. Calculated on your net realised profit for the month, above your previous high-water mark. If you're in drawdown for the month, no commission is charged.

It's the highest cumulative profit you've ever paid commission on. You only pay commission on new high-water-mark profit — so if you give back gains, no commission until you climb above the previous peak. You never pay commission on the same profit twice.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no — like any trading approach. We don't make a return guarantee and we never will. We charge commission only on net realised profit above your high-water mark, so we lose money when you do. That alignment is the whole point.

If you're after guaranteed returns, blank is not for you. Nothing in trading guarantees returns.

No. Trading is risky and losses are possible — sometimes large ones. blank is designed to remove the work (researching, placing orders, managing exits), not the risk. Anyone telling you AI trading is easy money is selling you something.

No serious tool makes that promise. blank is built to remove the work of researching and placing trades — not to guarantee returns. Anyone telling you AI trading is easy money is selling you something. Trade responsibly.

Yes, from the dashboard, any time. Cancelling stops the auto-renewal: you keep every day you've already paid for, access runs to the end of the last paid trading day, and no refund is issued for the remainder. Pay-as-you-go weeks never renew in the first place. Your existing positions stay in your Trading 212 account; only the AI advisor stops.

Safer than a lot of retail trading patterns (no leverage, no overnight gambling, no emotional bag-holding), but not risk-free. Specifically:

• Position sizing is Kelly-fraction capped — no all-in trades.
• Stops are ATR-based — wider in calm markets, tighter in panicky ones.
• Regime-aware sizing — exposure drops in detected high-vol periods.
• No margin, ever. Cash only.
• One-click kill switch in the desktop app.

That said, trading involves risk and losses are possible. Start small.

No. blank trades cash positions on the Trading 212 Invest or ISA account only. CFDs and leverage are not supported and aren't on the roadmap.

Three ways: (1) toggle live trading off in the desktop app — instant; (2) close the desktop app — supervisor stops mid-cycle; (3) revoke the API key in Trading 212 — nuclear option. None of these flatten your positions — they just stop new orders.

blank is software — not a regulated financial adviser. Certified Random is the publisher. Your broker (Trading 212) is the regulated party for executing your orders. blank does not provide personalised investment advice in the regulatory sense — it executes its own trading logic on your behalf inside the brokerage account you've authorised it to use.

The regime detector will see the volatility spike and the risk manager will reduce position sizing automatically. Stops are ATR-based so they widen with vol — they won't get knocked out by normal noise. That said, no system is crash-proof. The kill switch is one click.

blank runs on a frontier large-reasoning engine as its decision-maker, reasoning at maximum effort over live evidence each cycle. Faster models handle quick research and chat, and a separate pass reviews each decision. We chose the stack for reliable tool use and a long context window, so we never have to summarise away signal.

No. blank includes all AI usage in your plan. You never manage keys, never pay per token, and never get a surprise bill from a third party.

Your journal and config stay on your device in a local SQLite file. Your Trading 212 API key is stored encrypted at rest on the licence server and held only in process memory on your machine while the app runs. Trade fills and advisor chat sync to your account so the dashboard, the iPhone app and commission billing work. We don't sell or share data with anyone — full details in our privacy policy.

Windows 10+ desktop, macOS 12+ desktop, iOS companion app, web dashboard (any modern browser). Android is on the roadmap.

blank runs on your own machine while the app is open — that's the product, and it keeps working as long as you leave it running. There's no separate hosting to manage. (Advanced: the desktop binary will run on your own VPS if it has a graphical session, but you're on your own for upkeep.)