Terminology

Quantreno speaks the language of a real trading desk — the same words appear here, across the app, and in the assistant's answers. In the app, the small (i) beside a term opens the same one-line explanation you see below.

The ladder, explained

Seven short reads, top-down: the policy, the strategies under it, and how a thesis becomes a holding.

The mandate

The policy governing your capital — written down, visible, and enforced.

Themes

The story itself — style-free, researched on one clock, above every method.

Styles

The method behind a program — one style catalog, six families.

Programs

A theme's runnable implementation in one style — the preset a sleeve is minted from.

Sleeves

A funded slice of your capital running one method.

The thesis

The written reason behind every piece of risk — recorded before the trade, judged after.

From proposal to position

The four rungs from proposal to holding.

The book

Everything a sleeve holds, viewed as one.

Venues & instruments

Where you trade, and what you trade.

Venue: Where your orders go — a connected venue: an exchange you join directly, or a brokerage carrying your account.; The desk's word for a connected market-access endpoint. The relationships differ, and the desk says so: Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange traded by direct membership; Alpaca is a brokerage that carries your account and routes your orders onward to market centers; Robinhood is a brokerage connected read-only. For a brokerage account, the executing marketplace lies one hop beyond the connection.
Instrument: The thing you trade — a prediction-market contract, a stock, or an option.; The kind of thing traded — an event contract, a stock, or an option.
Market: A single tradable contract or symbol and its live price.; The app's narrow sense: one tradable contract or symbol and its live prices — a Kalshi ticker or an equity symbol. (In wider finance usage a market is the venue or order book those instruments trade in; here it names the instrument's own listing.)

Policy & strategy

The policy that governs your capital, and what you fund under it.

Desk: Your whole operation at a glance — what needs your decision, policy headroom, venue accounts, every book, latest fills.; The home surface (/desk): pending proposals and working orders first, then the mandate's live headroom, your connected venue accounts, each sleeve's book, and the latest executions — one capture stamp, every venue reporting honestly (a venue that didn't answer says so, it never shows $0).
Mandate: The policy governing your capital — how much is committed, the risk limits that are enforced, and your benchmark.; The client-policy layer above your sleeves: committed capital, the enforced risk budget (exposure cap, daily loss limit, drawdown pause, same-instrument concentration warning), and the default benchmark. Edited only on the Mandate page — the AI reads it but can never change it. Read the explainer →
Benchmark: What performance is compared against — the mandate sets the default; a sleeve can override it.; The comparison index for performance. The mandate carries the policy default (SPY unless you change it — a broad-market yardstick that fits directional equity sleeves better than market-neutral or event ones); an individual sleeve's configuration can override it. Read the explainer →
Theme: One story about how the world is moving — the idea itself, above any method. The desk researches it and briefs it.; The style-free narrative at the top of the ladder: the story in plain words, its subject (who's in the story), and the analyst's current brief — one research clock per theme. A theme holds no positions and can't spend anything; its programs beneath are the runnable ways to play it. Read the explainer →
Style: The kind of method a program runs — e.g. market-neutral, tail risk.; The method a program (and the sleeves minted from it) runs — one of six shipped today: Event-Driven, Relative Value, Momentum, Mean Reversion, Macro Thematic, Tail Risk. The style catalog groups the recognized styles into six families. Read the explainer →
Program: A theme's runnable implementation in one style — what a sleeve is minted from. A preset, not personal advice.; One way the desk runs a theme: a single style, its exact rules per market, and the budget sizes it's built for. A theme can carry several programs — same story, different machinery — and each program keeps its own "Can run in" coverage and availability chip. Funding a program mints your own sleeve from it. Read the explainer →
Sleeve: A funded slice of your capital running one style — its thesis, budget, and risk target.; A funded slice of capital running one style: one thesis, one budget, a risk target — drawn from your mandate's capital. The main thing you create and track — usually minted as your own copy of a program. Read the explainer →
Brief: What the desk is watching in a theme right now — research, not a proposal; nothing trades without your approval.; The analyst's published research on one theme: the current view — catalysts, live markets in scope, why now — always stamped as-of and marked stale past three market days. Desk-level and identical for every user; it becomes actionable only when you fund a sleeve and approve its proposals. Read the explainer →
Analyst: The desk's research seat — it studies themes and publishes briefs; it never trades.; The desk's research seat: it refreshes each curated theme's brief on a market-day cadence — research and market context, stamped as-of. It reads nothing about you, holds no client book, and never places or sizes a trade. Read the explainer →
Thesis: Why you hold a trade — the reasoning you adopted or wrote, with the conditions that would kill it.; Your recorded rationale on a sleeve: the statement, the catalyst, the kill criteria that would invalidate it, your conviction, and an optional time horizon. Adopt one from a desk brief, accept the AI's draft, or write your own — the proposals a sleeve generates carry the thesis they express. The AI drafts and flags; only you adopt, revise (by superseding — the old version keeps its trades), or close one. Read the explainer →
Horizon: When the idea should have played out — the thesis's clock; the desk flags it for you once it passes.; The thesis's time stop: the date by which its view should have paid. Every trade expressing the thesis shares this one clock. At review the desk suggests one from its own records — the journaled catalyst clock for this trade (an earnings date, an authored event date) or the sleeve's preset time stop — always naming the source, always yours to change or clear. When it passes, nothing is touched: the desk raises a flag and the decision is yours.
Run: One press of a sleeve's method — it ends in a proposal, an honest 'nothing qualified,' or a named failure.; One execution of a sleeve’s method against current markets, recorded from start to finish. Every run ends visibly: a proposal for your review, an honest "nothing qualified" naming the rule that bound, or a named failure — never silence. Start one from the sleeve page’s Run control or by asking in chat; nothing a run stages places without your review.
Expression: The market a run chooses when it carries a program into a proposal — recorded where it's real: legs, orders, positions.; Desk vocabulary, mostly backstage: the market/instrument choice a run (or the agent) makes when pressing a program — never pre-bound on the program or the sleeve. In the app it appears as derived facts: "Can run in" coverage chips, "expressed in" on a sleeve, and run outcomes naming what they scanned. Read the explainer →
Proposal: A specific trade suggested right now — a basket or a single order — for you to approve.; A basket a sleeve generates, or a single order the AI proposes, awaiting your decision — place it, pass on it, or (for baskets) let a newer run supersede it. Proposals expire after an hour — regenerate a basket, or redraft a single order in chat, for current pricing. Read the explainer →
Budget: The maximum this sleeve can deploy — a cap enforced at placement.; The capital committed to a sleeve and the most it can deploy: baskets are sized against it, and an open that would take the sleeve past it is refused with the figures. Closes and cancels are never blocked by the cap. Read the explainer →
Fund: Set a sleeve's budget — the money commitment that activates it. You choose every dollar.; The activation step: starter sleeves arrive at $0 and can draft proposals, but nothing places until you fund one. Suggested amounts are presets — funding is always your explicit choice. Read the explainer →

Execution

How an approved proposal becomes a venue order.

Order: An instruction sent to a venue to buy or sell.; One instruction to buy or sell an instrument, with its quantity and price terms — journaled verbatim along with the venue's response. Cancellation requests and reviews are journaled too, as their own entries. Read the explainer →
Limit order: The worst price you'll accept — executes at that price or better, or waits.; An order with a price bound: a buy executes at your limit price or lower, a sell at your limit or higher. If the market isn't there, it rests at the venue until the price is touched, you cancel it, or its stated lifetime ends. Even a limit that looks immediately executable may not fill — eligibility is never a guarantee.
Resting order: A live order waiting at the venue for its price.; An order the venue has accepted that hasn't fully executed — it waits (“rests”) until the market reaches its price, it's cancelled, or its lifetime ends (a day order expires with the session). Partial executions book as they land; the remainder keeps resting.
Fill: One completed piece of an order, at a specific price.; One completed piece of an order at a specific price. A single order can fill in several pieces. Read the explainer →
Blotter: Your running log of every order and fill.; The running journal of orders and fills — the Activity page renders it across all sleeves.
Capital reservation: Capital held for an approved order until the venue confirms it or the order resolves.; When you approve an order, its worst-case cost — including estimated fees — is held against the sleeve's budget until fills confirm it or the order resolves. It usually lives for seconds. If the venue's answer goes missing, the hold stays on the sleeve — labeled and aged — until the order sweep resolves it: capacity is over-held, never under-held.

Holdings

What you own once orders fill.

Position: Something you hold now (or a closed one), with its profit/loss.; One holding, open or closed, with its profit and loss — attributed to the sleeve that opened it. Read the explainer →
Exit plan: The optional take profit and stop loss you set on a trade — watched levels that alert you; nothing sells on its own.; A per-trade pair of watched price levels — a take profit on the winning side and a stop loss on the losing side — authored on the proposal at review, carried onto the position when it books, and amendable there while it stays open. They are the desk's alarm levels, not venue orders: when the market crosses one, the desk raises an alert and the close remains your action. Nothing auto-closes, ever.
Take profit: The price where you'd take the win — the desk alerts you when the market trades there; selling stays your call.; The profit-side level of the exit plan: above entry for a long, below for a short. Stored at exact per-unit price grain; crossing it raises an alert — it never places an order.
Stop loss: The price where you'd cut the loss — the desk alerts you when the market trades there; closing stays your call.; The loss-side level of the exit plan: below entry for a long, above for a short. A watched level, not a venue stop order (Kalshi has no stop orders at all) — the desk watches and alerts, and the close is always your action.
Alert: A standing notice the desk raises when something it watches for you happens — it informs, it never trades.; One fired notice about something the desk watches for you: the thesis rail (the evaluator's advisory flag, or a passed horizon standing over open positions — each version of a revised thesis keeps its own clock), a threshold alert when a position's price crosses its set take profit or stop loss, a pending proposal about to expire undecided, or a drawdown that reached your pause threshold at the daily close. Alerts stand on the desk beneath your decision queue, stating what happened and the moment it was observed, with a link to the surface where you'd act; the block also states what the watcher last checked and its cadence — it never claims real-time. An alert settles itself the moment its subject is handled — close the position and the notice stops ringing on its own — and once you dismiss one, that exact cause never nags again. Alerts never place or close anything; the decision is always yours, on the ordinary review surfaces.
Threshold alert: The notice raised when a position's price crosses its take profit or stop loss — a scheduled check, never an order.; The alert a watched level fires: every 15 minutes during market hours the desk reads market quotes for each open position that has levels set and compares the price it observed to your take profit and stop loss. A crossing raises one notice stating the level, the price observed, and exactly when it was read — figures from that observation, never recomputed. The same cause never fires twice: crossing back and forth re-raises nothing, and editing the level arms a fresh watch at the new price. It is not a venue stop order — nothing sells; the close stays your action on the ordinary surfaces.
Book: All the positions a sleeve is holding.; A sleeve's set of positions, viewed together — the desk's Books module shows one row per sleeve. Read the explainer →
LotComing later: One purchase batch, tracked for tax cost basis.; One purchase batch, tracked for cost basis.
Reconciliation gap: The named difference between what a venue reports for the account and what your sleeves account for.; When a venue's account-level holding differs from what your sleeves record for an instrument, the difference renders beside the figures it qualifies — both quantities, the direction, and when it was last checked. A gap is named, never silently adjusted away.

Attribution & performance

How orders and positions tie back to a sleeve, and how it's measured.

Allocation: Which sleeve an order or position belongs to.; The attribution of an order or position to a sleeve — what makes per-sleeve P&L possible.
Performance: How a sleeve is doing — P&L, exposure, drawdown.; How a sleeve — or the whole mandate — is doing over time: profit and loss, exposure, drawdown.
Book cost basis: Cost and realized figures computed from the activity this app executed — not the venue's tax accounting.; Cost basis and app-recorded realized P&L come from the orders and fills this app placed and booked, so a sleeve's figures always trace to its own activity. Your venue's statements remain the authority for taxes. When a venue later reports exact fill details that replace an estimate, the affected figures restate and show a dated “updated from final fill details” status.
Day P&L: Today's change vs the prior daily close — deposits and withdrawals never count as profit.; Today's profit or loss measured against the prior daily close, shown per basis — live and paper never sum. Intraday it's a labeled estimate from current account values; deposits and withdrawals are excluded, and a venue with no baseline or no current answer is named rather than silently folded in.
Daily close: Each trading day's closing account value — the baseline every today-number measures against.; The once-a-day recording of each connected account's value, captured automatically on weekday evenings whether or not you open the app — the dated series that day P&L and drawdown measure from.
Armed: A risk control that is measurable and live — until then it shows as arming, never as silently protective.; A risk control is armed once the number it watches actually exists. The drawdown pause arms per basis — live and paper each on their own — at your first daily close, where the peak seeds; until then it shows as arming with its condition stated, and it never pretends to protect. Once armed, a breach pauses new trades on that basis only; closing positions is never blocked.
Win rate: Closed round-trips that ended green — always shown with how many it's measured over.; Of a sleeve's completed round-trips, how many closed with a gain — always stated with the sample, like "4 of 6 closed green," because a rate without its count implies more than a small record can promise. A break-even close counts in the sample but not as a win; a close with no recorded profit or loss stays out of the sample entirely; and until the record holds at least one counted round-trip the sleeve shows a quiet state rather than 0%.
TransactionComing later: Any account entry — a trade, dividend, fee, or transfer.; Any account entry — a trade, a dividend, a fee, or a transfer.

Reading the numbers

The finance terms shown on baskets and sleeves.

Net beta: Dollar beta = the sum of each leg's value × estimated benchmark beta; near 0 = hedge target met.; The basket's estimated sensitivity to the benchmark in dollar terms: sum each leg's signed value multiplied by its estimated benchmark beta. Near zero means low estimated first-order market exposure over the estimation window — it reduces market risk, it doesn't eliminate it.
R²: Regression R²: the share of historical basket-return variation explained by the benchmark.; How much of the basket's historical movement the benchmark regression explains — a model-fit diagnostic, read alongside beta. A neutral basket usually shows a low value, but low R² alone doesn't prove the hedge is good.
Gross / Net: Gross = long value + |short value|; net = long value − |short value|.; Gross = total capital at work (long value plus the size of the short value). Net = the directional remainder (long value minus the size of the short value).
Gross exposure: Open book value at risk: equity opening value plus event-contract stake (its maximum loss), using absolute amounts.; The mandate gate sums the absolute app-recorded opening value of every open position in the current Paper or Live book. For equities that is the long cost or short sale value at entry; for a fully funded event contract it is the stake paid, which is its maximum loss before fees. It is book exposure, not a live mark, factor exposure, or venue margin requirement.
Same-instrument concentration: How many open positions share one symbol — a warning, not a factor-correlation model.; Counts concurrent open positions carrying the same symbol and warns above the mandate's configured guideline. It does not know that different instruments may depend on the same company, index, event, sector, or macro factor; genuine factor correlation is a future risk-model upgrade.
Earnings drift: The tendency of a stock to keep moving in the direction of an earnings surprise in the weeks after the report.; The tendency of a stock to keep moving in the direction of an earnings surprise in the weeks after the report; as a signal leg it tilts an equity basket toward recent positive surprises. Off unless you switch it on — a method parameter on your sleeve, not a suggestion.
Pair: Two orders that belong together — an event contract and a related stock position, reviewed and placed as one trade.; One trade in two legs on two venues — an event contract and a related stock position — reviewed and placed with one approval, booked as one package, and watched through the event's resolution.
Net edge: The gap after fees between the trade's stated view and what the price implies — the amount it is trying to capture.; One meaning everywhere (ADR-0028/ADR-0033): the gap, after fees, between a stated probability view and what the price being paid implies. On a pair the view is the related stock's implied odds; on a single-venue evaluation it is the stated house view against the fee-adjusted breakeven. Server-computed on every proposal that shows it, and shown as-is.
Basis risk: The part a hedge can't remove: the stock moves for its own reasons, not only the event's.; The part of a pair a hedge can't remove — the stock can move for reasons other than the event, so the two legs don't offset perfectly. Every pair proposal states this in plain words.
Implied probability: The chance the market's own price implies — a contract priced at 34¢ implies about a 34% chance.; The probability read off the executable price of the exact contract being evaluated: paying 34¢ for a contract that pays $1 implies roughly a 34% chance of it paying out. It is the market's collective read at that moment — not the desk's view, and not advice.
Breakeven probability: The chance at which this trade is exactly fair after fees — your view must beat this to expect a profit.; The probability at which the trade's expected payout exactly covers its cost including the venue's fee — computed for the exact order (price, size, and this venue's fee schedule), never a generic figure. If your honest view of the odds is above the breakeven, the trade has positive expected value; below it, it doesn't.
Catalyst clock: The countdown to the dated event this sleeve keys on — always stated with where the date came from.; Time remaining to the sleeve's catalyst — the scheduled event its method trades around. The clock names its source (an earnings-calendar entry with its estimated-vs-confirmed status, your configured date, or the market's own close time) and says plainly when the date is missing, unparseable, or already past — it never guesses.
Spread: The gap between the buy and sell price — the built-in cost of a round trip.; The difference between the price you'd pay to buy and the price you'd receive to sell at the same moment. It is the floor cost of entering and exiting: the market must move at least the spread in your favor before a round trip breaks even, before fees.

Availability

How a theme's chip reads in every theme list — derived from what you hold, what's connected, and the mode (ADR-0024, ADR-0032).

Running: You hold a sleeve minted from this program — it reads running whatever its budget.; A program reads running when you have a minted, non-archived sleeve on it — even at $0 (funding is what arms placement; the sleeve card carries the $0 truth). Running programs sort first in every list, and front their theme on the shelf.
Runnable now: A venue you've connected covers one of this program's markets — a minted sleeve could run today.; Runnable now means at least one of the program's published markets is covered by a venue connection you already have. Minting a sleeve is still your explicit action.
Needs a connection: The program's market has a shipped runner, but its venue isn't connected — the chip names it and links Settings.; Needs a connection names the exact venue whose connection would make the program runnable (Kalshi for prediction markets, Alpaca for stocks). Connecting is one step on the Settings page; nothing runs until you mint and fund a sleeve.
Live mode only: This program trades on Kalshi, which is live money only — switch to Live mode to use it.; Live mode only appears in Paper mode on programs whose markets trade at Kalshi (pairs included — both of a pair's legs are live). Kalshi has no paper environment, so no connection could make the program runnable in Paper mode; the action is the mode switch, not Settings. In Live mode the chip reads as usual.
Roadmap: On the desk's roadmap — not open for new sleeves yet; greyed and actionless.; Roadmap marks programs and styles not open for new sleeves yet — either no shipped runner exists for their markets, or the style is held back while the desk fronts its two launch styles (existing sleeves keep running either way). They stay visible greyed under their theme's story, with no actions — never a hidden promise.

The mode

Paper or Live — which money the whole workspace reads (ADR-0032). One mode at a time, chosen only by you.

Mode: Which money the whole app is showing: Paper (simulated) or Live (real). You choose it on the badge — never the app.; The workspace mode selects which of your two books every page reads — paper accounts in Paper mode, live accounts in Live mode. The badge in the corner names the current mode and carries the switch (entering Live asks you to confirm). The selection is remembered across sign-ins and devices, and the app never changes it on its own. Both books keep accruing whichever mode you're in; switching changes what you see, never your data.
Paper mode: Simulated money — practice with the full desk. Numbers here are paper-account results, not real dollars.; Paper mode shows your paper (simulated-money) accounts only: positions, day P&L, headroom, and sleeves are the paper book's. Kalshi and Robinhood have no paper environment, so they appear only in Live mode — the pages say so in place. Orders you approve in Paper mode reach only your paper account.
Live mode: Real money. Every figure is a live account's, and orders you approve commit real dollars.; Live mode shows your live accounts only — Kalshi, Robinhood, and a live Alpaca account if connected. Entering Live mode asks for an explicit confirm; leaving it doesn't. Orders you approve in Live mode reach only live accounts, and every placement still gets your per-order review first.

The style catalog

A practical style catalog — the styles relevant to the desk's current and planned venues, grouped into six families. Shipped styles open new sleeves today — the two launch styles, Event-Driven and Relative Value; Roadmap styles are committed but not open for new sleeves yet (a few already run for existing sleeves — their rows say so); Recognized styles are named here and buildable when prioritized; Out of scope styles need a venue or cadence we deliberately don't have. Each running style also states how its Run happens: auto-pipeline — the app constructs and sizes the proposal in code — or agent-led — the assistant researches the sleeve's markets against its rules and proposes each entry as an order card. Either way, nothing is placed without your review.

Event-DrivenTrade a known catalyst.

Event-DrivenShippedAgent-led: Trade around known catalysts (data releases, votes, hearings, decisions) — research the catalyst harder than the market and position before or just after.; The family's generic catalyst style.
Merger ArbitrageRecognized
DistressedRecognized
Special SituationsRecognized
Earnings PlaysRecognized: PEAD enters first as a signal-blend leg.

Relative ValueMispricing between related instruments.

Relative ValueShippedAuto-pipeline: Find mispricing between mathematically related instruments — prediction-market pairs, or the flagship market/sector-neutral equity baskets the solver constructs.; Neutral solver baskets — the flagship.
Pairs / Stat ArbRoadmap
Volatility ArbitrageRecognized: Prediction-market probability vs matched option-implied event odds — needs options execution.
Cross-Venue ArbitrageRecognized: Gated on cross-instrument sleeves.
Convertible ArbitrageOut of scope: No convertible-bond venue.
Capital-Structure ArbitrageOut of scope: No credit venue.
Fixed-Income ArbitrageOut of scope: No fixed-income venue.

Systematic DirectionalRide or fade price behavior.

MomentumRoadmapAgent-led: Detect sustained price drift with volume confirmation and ride it — information being incorporated shows up as trend.; Runs today for existing sleeves; new sleeves return after the beta.
Mean ReversionRoadmapAgent-led: Fade sharp moves when rapid research says the catalyst doesn't justify the spike — trade the overreaction back.; Runs today for existing sleeves; new sleeves return after the beta.
BreakoutRecognized

MacroTop-down programs and causal chains.

Macro ThematicRoadmapAgent-led: Map a macro program's causal chain and trade its second- and third-order effects across markets as each link triggers.; Runs today for existing sleeves; new sleeves return after the beta.
EM / CountryRecognized
Systematic Macro (CTA)Out of scope: No futures venue.

Volatility & ConvexityOwn optionality.

Tail RiskRoadmapAuto-pipeline: Buy cheap asymmetric payoffs — a diversified book of small positions where a low hit rate still pays for the misses.; Runs today for existing sleeves; new sleeves return after the beta.
Long VolatilityRecognized: Needs options execution.
Gamma ScalpingOut of scope: Rehedging cadence conflicts with per-action approval.

Carry / IncomeHarvest steady premia.

Premium SellingRoadmap: Selling richly priced contracts for frequent small gains — opens the family.
Covered CallsRecognized: Needs options execution.
Cash-Secured PutsRecognized: Needs options execution.
Dividend CaptureRecognized
FX CarryOut of scope: No FX venue.

Two words we deliberately keep apart: a Budget is the capital you give a sleeve, while an Allocation is which sleeve an order or position belongs to. And a Position is one holding, while a Book is a sleeve's whole set of them.