What 'Live Strategy' Means on Seentio (and Your Brokerage Type)

When you activate a strategy on Seentio, what does "live" actually mean? Is it placing trades for you? Is it just sending emails? What's the difference between the brokerage buttons on the Trade page and which one should you pick?

This guide answers all of that, including an honest explanation of why some brokerages (Schwab, Fidelity) currently only work as read-only connections and what that means for your strategy.

What you'll learn

The exact behavior of an "active" strategy on Seentio, the two types of brokerage connections we support, and what to do if you're stuck with a read-only brokerage.

Prerequisites

• A Seentio account (any tier)
• Optionally: a brokerage you'd like to connect — see the table below for which work in trading vs read-only modes

Part 1 — What "live" means

A strategy on Seentio has four possible statuses:

When we say a strategy is "live," we mean active. Here's the precise sequence of what happens:

1. You click Activate (or ask Claude to call activate_strategy).
2. Status flips to active. The strategy is added to _active_index.json in S3.
3. Our hourly cron Lambda starts including it in its rebalance-due check (see How the alert system fires).
4. When the cadence hits (e.g., 30 days for monthly), the Lambda generates a proposal and emails you a review link.
5. You click the link, review the proposal, and submit selected orders. Orders go to your connected brokerage.

Notice what's missing from that list: us auto-trading on your behalf. We never do that. Every order requires a human click. This is by design for both regulatory and trust reasons (more on this below).

Part 2 — The two brokerage connection types

When you visit Trade and click to connect a brokerage, you'll see two buttons:

We added the two-button UX in v3.5.16 specifically to handle a frustration: some brokerages support read-only access via SnapTrade but don't expose order placement to third parties. Before v3.5.16, the connection portal would appear empty when you tried to add Schwab or Fidelity, with no explanation. Now you get a clear choice.

Here's which brokerages support which mode (as of May 2026):

The Schwab and Fidelity restriction isn't a Seentio policy — it's how their APIs work. Schwab paused new third-party trading partner approvals after their post-2024 developer portal restructure. Fidelity has historically not opened trading APIs to consumer-facing aggregators. We've reached out to both about getting trading access and will update users via email if anything changes.

Part 3 — What if I have a read-only brokerage?

Be honest with you: it's a worse experience, and we're sorry. But it's still functional.

Here's the workflow if your only brokerage is Schwab or Fidelity (read-only):

1. Connect via the purple "Tracking Only" button. We'll fetch and display your holdings.
2. Create your strategy as normal. Magic Formula, Top N Dividend, whatever — the spec is identical regardless of brokerage type.
3. Activate the strategy with your read-only account. The system accepts this — it just means orders won't be placed via API.
4. When the rebalance fires, you get the email with the proposal exactly the same as a trading user.
5. The email proposal lists the orders. Now the friction part: open a separate browser tab, log into Schwab.com or Fidelity.com, and manually place each order yourself.
6. No "Submit Selected" button works for read-only accounts — that path is grayed out or shows a friendly notice telling you to execute manually.

We display the orders in a copy-paste-friendly format so you can quickly enter them in your brokerage's order ticket. Each order shows ticker, side, dollar amount, and share count.

A genuine apology: this is more friction than we'd like. The right experience is "click, done." We can't deliver that for Schwab and Fidelity users until those brokerages open up their trading APIs. We're aware. We're working on it. Until then, you have a choice between (a) the friction described above, and (b) opening a second account at one of the trading-supported brokerages and connecting that for execution.

Part 4 — Why we never auto-execute (even on trading brokerages)

Even when you're connected to a fully-executable brokerage like ETrade or Robinhood, we still require a click for every order*. The strategy alert says "review proposal here" and lands you on a page where you have to actively select and submit.

Two reasons we hold this line:

Regulatory

Auto-trading on a user's behalf without per-order confirmation crosses into investment-advisor territory under SEC rules. That's a different business model with substantial compliance overhead — registered investment advisors, fiduciary duty, written client agreements, ongoing audits. We're a research and execution platform, not an advisor. Keeping the human-click rule keeps us cleanly outside that classification.

Trust

Even setting regulation aside, irreversible automated orders are scary. A bug in your strategy spec, a mis-configured cadence, a stale price — any of these could cause unintended trades that you'd find out about when you check your account. The 30 seconds it takes to review a proposal is cheap insurance.

This applies to MCP/Claude Code too. The execute_pending_rebalance tool is the human click — Claude can call other tools to set things up, but the final order submission requires you to explicitly type a message asking Claude to execute (or you click a button on the web). We will never make Claude auto-execute on its own initiative.

Tips & common questions

• Test with a small position first. Activate a strategy with a tiny portion of your portfolio (5-10%) for a few rebalance cycles before scaling up. Watch how it behaves through one or two real-world rebalances. Iterate.

• Check your brokerage's trading hours. Even for executable connections, the brokerage executes orders during their market hours. A Sunday-evening proposal will queue and fill at Monday's open. Plan your alert review accordingly.

• Pause is your friend. If you go on vacation or just want a breather from monitoring, pause_strategy stops the cadence check without losing your spec. Resume any time with activate_strategy again.

• Read-only users: bookmark your brokerage's order entry page. When the alert hits and you have 5 stocks to enter manually, every second of friction matters. Browser bookmarks for "Schwab order ticket" or "Fidelity place trade" save real time over the course of a year.

• You can have both connection types simultaneously. Connect E*Trade for trading AND Schwab for read-only tracking. Strategies activate against a specific account ID — you choose which one when you call activate_strategy. Useful if you have an executable broker for new strategies and a long-term-hold account elsewhere.

• If a strategy errors out, check /alerts/history. Common causes: brokerage disconnect (re-authorize via get_broker_connection_url), tier downgrade (you lost SMS access), or stale spec (a factor you used now returns 0 tickers — re-run dry_run to debug).

What's next

• Create your first strategy using Claude Code.
• Read how the alert system actually fires so you know what to expect.
• Connect a brokerage at /trade — pick the mode that matches your goals.

Need more help? Visit our Chat page to ask Seentio's AI assistant, or reach out at contact@app-seentio.com.