FAQ
Straight answers.
The questions people actually ask — about advice, your money, costs, taxes, and how the models work.
The basics
Is this advice?
No. We’re not registered as an investment adviser, portfolio manager, or dealer, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold. We publish systematic model output for educational use. For personal advice, talk to someone who is registered.
Will I get rich?
Probably not from a website. We publish models and the reasoning behind them. What you do with that is yours.
I’m new to investing.
That’s fine. Read the dashboard, read the methodology, and watch for a while before doing anything. No minimum, no card. Treating it like a weather report for a few months is a perfectly good start.
Your money
Where’s my money?
Not here. We don’t hold your money and we don’t place trades — we’re not registered to. Your accounts stay wherever they already are.
Will the model be wrong?
Sometimes. Some shifts save real money; some are false alarms — and false alarms have a cost too (see taxes, below). The rules don’t flinch either way, which is the point: no gut calls, no overrides.
Costs & taxes
What about taxes and trading costs?
Real, and worth understanding. In a taxable (non-registered) account, acting on the signal realizes capital gains and pays commissions each time. Two layers drive that: the basket re-ranks on a fixed quarterly schedule (every market), and the defensive switch moves the whole basket to cash when stress builds — though the switch flips rarely, about once a year across the 22-year backtest, clustered around crises. In a TFSA or RRSP the tax disappears entirely; the trading friction (commissions, spreads) remains.
Are the backtest numbers net of costs and taxes?
The published backtest figures are net of trading costs (about 5 bps per trade) but pre-tax. Separately, the dashboard includes an after-tax lens that models a taxable account at a representative ~43% marginal rate (an upper-bracket Ontario rate, not the ~53% top), 50% capital-gains inclusion, with the signal’s gains realized yearly and a buy-and-hold index deferred until sale — so you can see the tax drag rather than guess at it. None of this is tax advice; check your own situation with a professional.
What does it cost?
Nothing during preview. No card. If a paid tier launches later, we’ll tell you first.
The models
Why five countries?
Not a feature list. The same rules, unchanged, run against five markets that crash at different times for different reasons. If they only worked in one, they’d probably be curve-fit to it. Five markets is the out-of-sample test, running live. Only care about the US and Canada? Just read those rows.
How often does anything actually change?
Most weeks, nothing. The defensive switch flips roughly once a year on average; the basket re-ranks quarterly (every market). You only get an email when a model changes posture — so a quiet inbox is the normal state.
Still curious?
The methodology spells out every rule and threshold. The record shows every change since day one.