Getting started with AlgoThink

AlgoThink watches the market with rule-based strategies and hands you trade ideas you can act on — or ignore. Nothing trades without your say-so until you explicitly turn that on. This guide covers your first hour.

1. Sign up and set your starting balance

After you create an account, a short welcome wizard runs once. It has two screens: a tour of what the platform does, then a single question — how much equity you want to manage.

Your paper account starts with that amount (anywhere from 100 to 1,000,000 USDT; the default is 1,000). Pick the number you'd realistically trade, not a fantasy number — position sizing is a fraction of equity, so paper results only tell you something useful if the equity is realistic.

2. Understand paper vs live

Paper trades a simulated balance against real, live market prices, with realistic fees and slippage modelled. No exchange account needed, no money at risk. This is where every account starts.
Live places real orders on USDT-margined perpetual futures, on your own exchange account, through API keys you create. It takes several deliberate steps to enable — see how arming live trading works.

There's no time limit on paper trading, and no pressure to leave it.

3. Wait for your first suggestions

Strategies run on hourly candles by default and the platform scans every few minutes for changes. A suggestion only appears when a strategy's rules actually fire on a newly closed candle — so a quiet first hour is normal, not a broken feed.

When one arrives it shows up on the Dashboard under the Trading tab, with its entry, stop-loss, take-profit and the reasoning behind it. Each suggestion stays live for 60 minutes before expiring. See how to read a suggestion.

4. Set your risk limits before you need them

The platform ships with conservative defaults, but they're yours to change under Account → Risk & sizing. These are hard caps that block orders when crossed, not reminders. Worth doing before you're in a hurry to approve something. See setting your risk limits.

Where things live

Dashboard — suggestions, open positions, equity curve, risk controls, charts, news, strategies.
Options — options trading, where enabled.
Reports — realized performance by period (Pro).
Activity — every decision made on your behalf, including the trades that were skipped and why.
Account — mode, exchange, risk limits, API keys, notifications, 2FA.
Referrals — your invite link and earned coupons.

What to expect

Not every day has trades. Rules that fire constantly are usually rules that lose money. Quiet stretches are the system working.
Suggestions are ideas, not instructions. Each is an automated output from a tested rule set, shown with its reasoning so you can judge it. It isn't financial advice, and the final call is always yours.
Losses happen. Every strategy here has losing trades; the stop-loss on each suggestion is what bounds them. Set your risk limits accordingly.