No jargon. What it buys, the two rules it follows, what a normal day looks like, and what it cannot do. About five minutes.
Once a day, a small program on your computer decides how much of your money to keep in the stock market, and keeps the rest in safe cash.
That is the whole idea. It does not pick stocks, it does not day-trade, and it does not guess what happens next. It follows two simple rules, the same way every day, and places the orders in your own brokerage account. Your money never leaves your account and never passes through us.
One fund that holds all of them at once: Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Google and the rest of the top 100. It is one index, not a stock pick.
When the market is very calm, it can also hold a version of that fund that moves twice as much each day, so it can hold more market than the cash in the account. It never borrows money to do it.
Short-term US government bills: about the safest place money can sit, paying the going interest rate while it waits.
Think of it as the waiting room. Money that is not in the market sits here, earning a little, until the rules say go back in.
That is it. No crypto, no options, no single stocks, no foreign markets. (The STEADY engine also holds the S&P 500 and gold, each under the same two rules.)
Every day it measures how much the market has been swinging up and down lately. The calmer it has been, the more it holds; the wilder, the less.
Like driving: you go the speed limit on a clear day and slow down in a storm. You are still going the same way, just more carefully.
It reacts to what already happened. It does not try to predict.
Once a month it checks one thing: is the market's price below its average of the last 200 trading days (about ten months)? If it is, two months in a row, it sells and moves everything to safe cash. When the price climbs back above that average, it goes back in the same way.
Like leaving the beach when the tide has clearly turned, instead of trying to guess the exact wave.
Striped = out of the market, in safe cash.
Rule 2 is what mattered in the big crashes. In 2000–2002 and in 2008 the market kept falling for a year or more. The engine took a loss on the way down before the check said “out”, then sat in cash while most of the fall happened without it.
It makes a few small trades a month on average (STEADY, which holds three things, about one a week). It never trades during the day, and it never trades until you switch it on.
We tested the rules on every trading day of the full cycle, 1999 to 2026 (the dot-com crash and 2008 included), with real costs: whole shares only, commissions, and trades placed the day after the signal, not the same moment. Growth per year, and the worst fall from a high along the way:
Full cycle 1999–2026, the same period for every row. A history test, not real trading. The engines are one rule at three strengths: same two rules, different amounts held. Full tables and methods on the research page.
So in this history, all three engines ended with more money than simply holding the market, and fell much less in the two big crashes. The Nasdaq-100 on its own fell more than 80% from 2000 to 2002; the engines that hold it never fell more than 27%. That is the whole point: stay in for the long rises, step out of the long falls.
What it gave up. In a crash that happens in weeks, not months, the monthly check is too slow: in March 2020 the market dropped a third in five weeks and bounced right back, before the monthly check could act. ULTRA still fell about a fifth of its value (less than the Nasdaq-100's 27%, but a real hit). In 2022's slow slide ULTRA fell about a quarter before stepping out, about as much as the whole US market fell that year. Rule 2 protects you from long crashes, not sudden ones.
The past is not a promise. The next fall could be deeper than any number above. It has been running with real money only since August 25, 2026, and every day of that is published on the Live Record, losses included.
No. Your money stays in your own Interactive Brokers account, in your name. The program runs on your computer (or a small server you rent) and places orders there. We never see your account or your passwords.
No. It decides once a day, after the market closes, and on average trades a few times a month. Many days it does nothing at all.
Yes. It has had losing years, and at its worst in the test ULTRA was down 27% from its high before it recovered. A fast crash can hurt before the monthly check steps out. Only use money you can leave alone through a bad year.
On its calmest days, ULTRA and SELECT can hold a fund that moves two dollars for every dollar the Nasdaq-100 moves. That is how it can grow faster than the market. It is also why it only does this when the market is calm, and steps back as soon as things get jumpy. It never borrows money.
At least $2,000. The engine runs on less, but below that the $1 commission on every trade and the one-time price take most of what it has historically added over simply holding an index fund. With less than $2,000, an index fund you add to each month is the better start; moving it over later costs nothing extra, because the engine treats a deposit as a free rebalance.
Yes, and you should. Interactive Brokers gives you a free practice account with pretend money. Setup connects to it first, and nothing real trades until you switch to your real account and turn it on.
Pick the worst fall you could sit through without selling in a panic. If −18% is your limit, STEADY. If you can stomach −27%, ULTRA. The engine that makes the most on paper is useless if you quit it at the bottom.
In a regular (taxable) account, its sales can create taxable gains, like any trading. In an IRA they do not, until you withdraw. Ask your tax person how that applies to you.
Not investment advice. Past results, tested or real, do not promise future results. You can lose money.