Telling your desk what you want

Open Strategy › Guidance and write, in the box at the top, what you would tell your portfolio manager on the phone. "Bet the house, make 400% of our book by new years." "Really over expose me to the OAI IPO." "Tomorrow go ham, try and make a few thousand bucks and sell it into cash, then two days after go back to being more conservative." Press Read it back to me. Nothing has happened yet.

Where

Strategy › Guidance, the box called Tell your desk

What it does

Compiles your words into a card of typed pieces: a goal, a tilt, a dated schedule, a hard rule, a preference, a limit change or a posture change

What each piece says

Enforced (the machine holds every order to it), Instructed (the desk is told, with your own words attached, until it ends) or Watching (an event the desk waits for)

When it applies

Only when you press Confirm. Anything that loosens your protection also asks for your code and the words MORE RISK

How it ends

Every piece shows its end date; End now on the entry, or Take it back on the card you confirmed

What comes back

A card, in a second or two. First a quick reading by the built-in reader; when the desk has read it too (usually within a minute) its reading replaces the first one. The card lists what it understood as separate pieces, each with your exact words quoted under it and one line per effect:

• Enforced. The machine enforces this on every order: a limit ("at -$2,000 on a day the desk halts; until then it keeps trading"), a posture, a dated posture step, or a rule that refuses buys in a name. These reach the Executor; the PM cannot talk its way past them.
• Instructed. The PM, the Researcher and the Quant read this at the top of every session until it ends, with your words attached: a goal ("work toward 400% by Dec 31; a target, not a promise"), an overweight ("prefer qualified entries tied to the OAI IPO, size them at the top of the band"), a day's mode ("Wednesday: day-trade, aim for about $3,000, sell the day's positions into cash before the close").
• Watching. An event the desk waits for ("the OAI IPO"). The piece ends when the event has happened or on its end date.

Untick any piece you did not mean. If the words were a question ("why didn't you buy MSFT?"), the card says so and offers nothing to confirm; ask it in Consult instead.

Confirming, and what needs your code

Confirm applies every ticked piece in one step and writes one entry in the audit log per change. When a piece loosens your protection (a wider loss halt, a bigger position, a riskier posture now or on a scheduled day) the card says exactly what loosens, in your numbers, and asks for the words MORE RISK and your authenticator code, the same ceremony as loosening a limit on Risk › Limits. A rule the machine will enforce (no buys in a name) asks for the code too, because it sweeps working orders. Tightening never needs a code. A switch to the Speculative posture also lists its risks and asks you to type the acknowledgement under them; see Speculative mandate: what it means.

What the desk does with it

Under the box, What the desk is working under lists everything in force: the goal first (there is only ever one; a new goal replaces the old one and says so), then schedules with each dated step and whether it has run, tilts, hard rules and standing preferences. Each shows when it ends. The PM reads the list, with your words, right under its mandate at the start of every session and must say in its summary how the day's decisions served the goal or the tilt, or why they could not. The Critic grades that use: citing your overweight to justify a trade in something you never named, or leaning on the goal to skip a stop, is a finding. A goal changes what the desk selects and how it sizes inside your limits; it never moves a limit by itself. If you want the envelope wider, say that too ("I'm willing to lose $5k a day") and it comes back as an Enforced piece with the consequence spelled out.

A dated step is applied by the machine before that day's open and undone on the day the card said ("Friday: back to Conservative"); you can see each step flip from coming to done on the entry. "Sell it into cash by the close" is an instruction to the PM's pre-close pass for that day, quoted on the entry as Instructed: the desk proposes the exits, the Executor still checks each one.

Taking it back

End now on any entry stops it: the desk stops reading it from its next session, an enforced rule lifts within seconds (ending a rule that blocked buys asks for your code), and a schedule that had already changed the posture puts the earlier posture back. Take it back on a card you confirmed undoes the whole card: its entries end and the limits or posture it changed return to what they were; if putting a number back would loosen your protection today, that asks for the code like any loosening.