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Example Your first Buy

Example: EXAMPLE last traded at $50.00 and you want 10 shares.

1. Open the EXAMPLE page from Symbol and find the Paper trade box (or go to Orders → New paper order).
2. Choose Buy, type 10 in Qty (whole shares only) and leave Order type on Market.
3. Read the Preview line and click the New paper order: … button. If it's greyed out, the line next to it says why (for example, Qty is empty or the symbol wasn't picked from the list). Check the summary and click Confirm. Once it's placed you see Order placed with a summary: click Continue for a fresh ticket or View orders to see it on Orders. If an identical order is already working, the confirmation step asks before you place another.

What happens: while the market is open, the order fills at the last real price: 10 × $50.00 = $500.00, plus the fee ($0.00 unless you type one). Your paper cash goes down by that amount, the position shows up in Portfolio and the Journal opens.

Market closed? Orders fill only during US regular hours, 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM ET, Monday to Friday (closed on market holidays; some days close early at 1:00 PM ET). A Market order placed outside those hours is Queued for open and fills at the first fresh real price after the next open. Nothing is charged until then, and you can cancel it on Orders.

Fills always use a fresh real quote, received in the last 60 seconds. If the quote is stale or missing, a Market order is not filled.

Example A Limit order

Example: EXAMPLE is at $50.00, but you only want to buy 10 shares if it drops to $48.00 or lower.

1. Choose Buy, type 10 in Qty, set Order type to Limit and type $48.00 in Limit. (Typing an Entry / Price different from the last price also switches the order to Limit. On a phone, Limit, Stop, Fee and Auto-execute are under More.)
2. Keep Auto-execute when Limit / Stop is reached ticked; it is on by default. If you untick it, the ticket sends a market fill at the last price instead.
3. Place and confirm. The order shows as Working on Orders, and you can cancel it there until it fills.

What happens: when a fresh real quote during regular hours is at or below $48.00, the order fills by itself at $48.00, the limit price. A Sell or Short limit works the other way round: it fills when the price is at or above the limit.

Stop (exit): on a Buy or a Short you can also enter a stop price. With Auto-execute on, after the fill it is armed as an automatic Sell (or Cover) of those shares, which fills at the last real price once the price reaches the stop. The confirmation step warns you when a limit or stop is more than 50% away from the last price, which is usually a typo.

Example Short and Cover

Example: you think EXAMPLE may fall from $50.00, so you short 10 shares.

1. Choose Short, type 10 in Qty and place a Market order. A Short sets aside 150% of the position's value from your paper cash as a reserve: 10 × $50.00 = $500.00, so $750.00 is reserved.
2. Later, EXAMPLE trades at $40.00. Choose Cover to buy the shares back. You can cover up to your open short (10 shares here), never more. On Cover, the size buttons are 25%, 50%, and 100% of the open short.

What happens: covering releases the reserve and books the difference: ($50.00 − $40.00) × 10 = $100.00 profit, before fees. Had the price risen instead, the same math would give a loss.

You can't be long and short the same symbol at once: Sell a long position before you short that symbol, and Cover a short before you buy it. Sell and Cover are always allowed up to your open shares, even if a loss takes your cash below zero; while cash is negative, new Buy and Short orders are blocked (deposits still work).

Example Create a price alert

Example: you want to hear when EXAMPLE reaches $60.00 or more.

1. On Orders, find Price alerts. Enter the symbol, choose Above as the Direction and type $60.00 as the Threshold.
2. Choose how you want to hear about it in Notify via (Both, Email or In-app) and click Add alert.

What happens: the alert fires once, when a real quote is at or above $60.00 (for Below: at or below). It then shows Triggered; click Re-arm to watch again. You can also pause, resume, edit or delete an alert, and keep up to 50 of them. Alerts only notify you (by the bell in the app, by email or both, as you chose); they never place an order.

Notes can watch a price too: a note on a stock page that names one price level with a $ sign is tagged Watching, and you are alerted when a real quote gets there.

Example Read Portfolio and Stats

Example: you bought 10 EXAMPLE at $50.00, and it now trades at $55.00.

1. Portfolio sums up your paper book: Paper cash (your buying power), Market value, Total equity (cash plus positions, including any short reserve), Day P&L, Total P&L, an equity chart and your open positions.
2. In this example the position shows a Total P&L of ($55.00 − $50.00) × 10 = $50.00. It stays unrealized (fees count as part of the cost) until you sell; then it becomes realized.
3. Stats shows learning numbers from your closed trades, such as Net P&L (realized, after fees), Win rate, trade counts and your journal Streak; pick a range: 1W, 1M, 3M, YTD, or All. Calendar shows your realized P&L by day, with weekly, monthly and yearly totals.

Example Advanced: an AI-run paper strategy

Example: a group named “Example income group” with a $50,000 paper budget.

1. Create a group. Open Advanced → + Create new group. You can have up to 5 groups, with up to 20 tickers each. The budget moves from your Manual cash (suggested $50,000, at most $500,000 per group) and goes back to it when the group stops. To start with tickers you already follow, tick them under Copy from my Manual watchlist; you can also add or remove tickers later on the group’s page.
2. Ask Grok to write the methodology. Under Who writes the methodology? choose The AI writes it, describe what it should focus on and click ✦ Generate strategy. It suggests a name, a methodology, conditions and a budget. Review and edit everything, then click Save draft or Activate. Prefer to write it yourself? Choose I'll write it.
3. How cycles run. While the group is Running, the AI runs one automatic cycle each trading day, from 10:00 AM ET while the market is open, and you can click Run cycle now up to 5 times per group per day. In a cycle it follows your methodology: it may add or remove tickers and place up to 20 Market paper orders, only in the group's tickers or positions (while the market is closed, those orders are queued for the open). Each AI fill gets a Journal entry with its reasoning, and every step is listed under Recent AI actions.
4. Pause, Resume, Stop. Pause means no new AI orders until you click Resume, which sets the group back to Running. Stop archives the group once it has no open positions or working orders, and the group's cash goes back to your Manual cash. If it still has some, use Close all & stop, which cancels the working orders and closes the positions at Market. That only works while the market is open; when it's closed, Pause the group in the meantime.

Real Grok is a limited pilot that is switched on per account. Without it, the AI features give clearly labelled sample output. With it, each account has a monthly real-Grok budget of $10.00 in usage and up to 25 real Grok requests per day, and the pilot as a whole has a shared monthly budget. Every AI call (Analyze, strategy drafts and cycles, sample or real) also counts toward a limit of 60 AI calls per account per day.

When real Grok isn't available (a monthly budget is used up, the daily request limit is reached or Grok returns an error), Analyze and strategy drafts show sample output with a notice. An Advanced cycle is skipped instead: no orders are placed, no tickers change, and Recent AI actions explains why.

Download strategy. On a group's page, Download strategy gives you its methodology, conditions, tickers, engine rules and a cash and positions snapshot as a PDF or JSON file, also for paused and stopped groups.

Show on Manual. On a group, turn on Also show these tickers on Manual to list its tickers on your Manual Watchlist with a group badge. Mirrored rows are read-only and don’t count toward the 20 cap. Stopped groups stop mirroring; Paused groups still mirror. Manual and Advanced cash, portfolios and orders stay separate.