trader-risk

The Risk Manager is the gate between a proposal and the broker. Every order written by trader-budget or trader-broker's flatten passes through it. A BLOCK is final for that order: it does not go to the user for a yes, and it does not go to the broker. Most people who day trade lose money. These limits keep each loss and each day's losses small. They do not make a trade win.

${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR} below is this skill's folder (where this SKILL.md lives).

python3 "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/check.py"                           # trader/ files; writes trader/state/risk.json
python3 "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/check.py" --json
python3 "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/check.py" --no-write                # look without recording
python3 "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/check.py" --now "2026-10-19 10:15"  # pin the clock (New York time)

What it reads and writes

file	what
trader/orders.json	the proposed orders (trader-budget, or trader-broker's flatten)
trader/config.json	the limits (trader-budget ships config.example.json)
trader/portfolio.json	cash and holdings; if missing, a fresh account funded with the budget
trader/prices.json	a fresh price raises the entry it measures risk from; also values holdings
trader/state/broker.json	what was placed today: duplicates, trades per day, daily loss, day trades
trader/state/risk.json	the verdicts it writes, with a fingerprint of each exact order

Entries and exits

An entry opens or adds to a position: a buy, or a sell that would go short. An exit only reduces what you already hold. Getting out must always be possible, so an exit is checked for format, asset and short sales only. Every other rule (day limits, entry window, loss, reward:risk, blocked list, size, duplicates) turns into a warning for an exit, never a BLOCK.

The checks

Orders are checked in file order, as if each passed order had filled, so a batch that is fine order by order but breaks a limit together is caught.

check	blocks when
format	no symbol, side not buy or sell, both or neither of qty and notional, a notional order that is not market + day (Alpaca's rule), a limit order with no limit price; a bracket that is not whole shares, not day or gtc, or misses its stop-loss or take-profit
asset	an option symbol while allow_options is false; crypto or anything that is not a US stock or ETF ticker
short	a sell of more than you hold (allow_short false)
blocked	(entries) the ticker is on the blocked list
size	(entries) under min_order_usd or over max_order_usd
position	(entries) the stock would be over max_position_pct of the account
cash	(entries) the buy would leave less than the cash buffer, or need margin
stop	(entries) no stop while require_stop is true (a bracket stop_loss_stop_price, or the order's plan stop); a stop on the wrong side of the entry
loss	(entries) qty x (entry minus stop) over max_loss_per_trade_usd
reward:risk	(entries) (target minus entry) / (entry minus stop) under min_reward_risk
daily loss	(entries) the max losses at the stops of today's entries, plus this one, over max_daily_loss_usd
trades	(entries) max_trades_per_day entries already placed today
window	(entries) before no_entries_before or after no_entries_after, or the market is closed
pdt	(entries, only with pdt_guard true) 3 day trades already in the last 5 business days
duplicate	(entries) the same symbol and side twice in one batch, or already placed today
daily limit	(entries) max_orders_per_day orders already placed today

How the numbers work:

• The entry it measures from: the limit price for a limit order. For a market order, the HIGHER of the plan's entry and a fresh price from trader/prices.json (under 15 minutes old). A plan written at 10:15 cannot understate the risk at 10:55 after the price ran up. An older price is not used, and it says so.
• Daily loss counts the full max loss of every entry placed today, win or lose, as trader-broker logged it. Three full-size trades use up a $150 day.
• The window is New York time, worked out in the tool (daylight saving included), never from the computer's clock zone. Weekends and NYSE holidays are closed. On a 1:00 p.m. early close the window ends 3 hours earlier too. Set both no_entries_* to null to switch the window off.
• pdt_guard (off by default) counts a day trade as a symbol bought and sold on the same day in the log, plus any entry placed today (it is meant to be flat by the close). FINRA removed the $25,000 pattern-day-trader minimum (Regulatory Notice 26-10, effective June 4, 2026; firms may phase in until October 20, 2027), so some brokers still apply the old rule: turn pdt_guard on if yours does.

Warnings do not block, but say them to the user: a LIVE account, a number sent as a number instead of a string, a stop that lives only in the plan and not at the broker, a price too old to use, an early close today.

Steps

1. If the price may have moved since the plan, refresh it first (trader-alerts: alerts.py quote TSLA --write).
2. Run check.py. Exit code 0 means every order passed, 1 means at least one was blocked.
3. Tell the user the result in plain words, order by order: the max loss at the stop, reward:risk, and how much of today's limits it uses. For a BLOCK, give the reason and the fix (fewer shares, a closer stop from trader-exit, wait for the window, or skip the trade). Never change a limit yourself.
4. If the order changes in any way, run the check again. trader-broker matches each order to its verdict by fingerprint, so an edited order is not ready until it passes again, and a verdict from yesterday does not count today.

Example: the reel

The TSLA bracket from trader-budget at 10:15 AM on Monday 2026-10-19, on a fresh $5,000 paper account with the example config:

PASS  #1 buy TSLA 8 shares, entry
          entry 364.18 (the plan's entry), stop 358.32, target 370.04: risk 5.86 a share
          max loss $46.88 (limit $50), reward:risk 1.00 (min 1)
          today before this: 0 of 3 trades, $0 of $150 daily loss

1 passed, 0 blocked at 2026-10-19 10:15 New York. Cash after the passed orders: $2,086.56 (paper account).

One more share and it is blocked:

BLOCK #1 buy TSLA 9 shares, entry
          entry 364.18 (the plan's entry), stop 358.32, target 370.04: risk 5.86 a share
          max loss $52.74 (limit $50), reward:risk 1.00 (min 1)
          today before this: 0 of 3 trades, $0 of $150 daily loss
        - loss: 9 shares x 5.86 risk a share = $52.74 at the stop, over your $50 max loss per trade

The same 8 shares checked at 10:55 with the real 10:52 quote (366.48) in trader/prices.json are blocked twice: 8 x 8.16 = $65.28 at the stop, and reward:risk 0.44. At 9:40 they are blocked by the window (no new entries before 9:45). The 3:55 PM sell that closes the position passes, even though it is after the 3:30 entry cutoff: it is an exit.

Rules

• A PASS only means the order is allowed to be shown to the user. It is not a yes.
• Every number comes from the config, the order, the portfolio, the prices or the broker log.
• Free Yahoo prices are unofficial and can lag; the broker's price is the one that fills, and a stop can fill worse than its price in a fast market.

What it never does

It never places an order, never edits an order to make it pass, never loosens a limit, never blocks a sell that only gets the user out, and never treats a PASS as the user's yes.

Safety

• Education and tooling, not financial advice. A PASS is a rules check, not a recommendation.
• Paper trading by default ("paper": true). Going live is the user's own decision, in their own config.
• Nothing in this pack places an order except trader-broker, and only when all three hold: trader-risk passed that exact order today, the user typed an explicit yes for that one order in the chat, and the user clicked Allow once on Claude's own card because the order tool is set to "Needs approval" (Customize > Connectors > tool permissions). Never set an order tool to "Always allow".
• No options, margin, short selling or leverage unless the config allows it and the user confirms.
• Broker keys live in environment variables or the Claude Desktop config, never in the chat.