Broker Connectivity

Overview

Astral offers broker connectivity for users with a Premium subscription. To deploy a strategy to a live brokerage account, you must connect a supported broker account and complete broker verification.

When you deploy a strategy to a broker, Astral sends trade instructions generated by your strategy to your selected broker through SnapTrade, our broker connectivity provider. Orders submitted through Astral remain subject to the broker's own account rules, market-hour limitations, asset restrictions, trading permissions, and other broker-enforced policies.

Astral currently supports individual cash accounts, individual margin accounts, and Coinbase crypto accounts.

Supported Trading Scope

Astral currently supports:

• Long positions only
• Equities through supported brokerages
• Crypto through Coinbase

Astral does not currently support:

• Short selling
• Options
• Forex
• Commodities
• Mixed-asset-class deployment within a single strategy deployment

For equities, Astral strategies trade during regular market hours only. Astral currently allows one live Astral strategy per account.

Supported Brokers

Broker connectivity is provided by SnapTrade.

Connecting Your Brokerage Account

To connect a brokerage account, you must authorize SnapTrade to communicate with your broker on Astral's behalf. This connection allows Astral to receive account data needed for deployment and to submit trade instructions generated by your deployed strategy.

A connected brokerage account must also be verified before it can be used for live strategy execution.

Brokerage Verification

All supported brokers require a verification step before live deployment. Broker verification is performed by submitting a limit order and then canceling it. This process is used to confirm that:

• the broker connection is active,
• the account is enabled for trading,
• API-based order requests can be received by the broker, and
• Astral can successfully communicate with the account through SnapTrade.

In most cases, this verification order is canceled without any transaction occurring. However, because it is a live order submitted to the broker, execution is unlikely but not impossible.

Pre-Deployment Checks

Before a strategy can be deployed, Astral performs a series of checks on the selected account and strategy configuration.

These checks include:

• No existing positions in assets traded by the strategy — The account should not already hold positions in assets the strategy is expected to manage.
• Account not already in use by another Astral strategy — Only one Astral strategy may be deployed per account at a time.
• Asset class matches account type — The selected strategy and the connected account must be compatible. For example, crypto strategies must be deployed to a supported crypto account, and equity strategies must be deployed to a supported equity brokerage account.
• Excluded timeframes — Certain timeframes may be excluded during the initial rollout. These exclusions may be reduced or removed over time.

If one or more of these checks fails, deployment may be blocked until the issue is resolved.

Strategy Controls and Position Sizing

Astral applies the following deployment controls across supported brokers:

• Global minimum trade size: $1.50
• Positions are sized based on:
  • your strategy output, and
  • the available buying power in your connected brokerage account

Astral actively sizes positions using the capital it assumes is available to the deployed strategy, including allocated and unallocated capital associated with that strategy. If a broker supports fractional trading, Astral may submit fractional quantities. If a broker does not support fractional trading, quantity will be rounded down to the nearest whole amount.

Recommendation

For the best experience, we recommend using a brokerage account that:

• is dedicated to Astral strategy deployment,
• is not holding unrelated positions, and
• is not being traded manually outside of Astral.

If you need to move cash or otherwise materially change the account, we recommend undeploying the strategy first, making the account changes, and then redeploying once the account is in the desired state.

Strategy States

Astral strategies can appear in the following states:

• Saved — The strategy has been created and saved in Astral, but it is not actively deployed.
• Deployed for Alerts — The strategy is active for alerts only and is not placing trades.
• Deployed for Paper Trading — The strategy is active in paper trading mode and is not connected to a live broker for execution.
• Deployed to Broker — The strategy is actively deployed to a connected live brokerage account for execution.
• Paused — The strategy has been temporarily halted and is not currently placing trades. This can happen if Astral detects an issue such as an order rejection, insufficient funds, or an account integrity problem.
• Undeployed — The strategy is no longer active in deployment and will not place trades.

Managed Position Integrity

Astral tracks the positions it expects to be controlling in a deployed brokerage account. If Astral detects that the live account no longer matches the state expected by the deployed strategy, a managed position integrity warning may appear.

This warning can be triggered by actions such as:

• manually buying an asset that is being traded by an Astral strategy,
• manually closing all or part of a position that Astral opened,
• external transfers that affect the account state,
• broker liquidations, or
• other account activity that causes the live broker positions to differ from Astral's expected managed positions.

When managed position integrity fails, Astral may pause the strategy until the issue is resolved.

Common Strategy Errors

Managed Position Integrity Failed

This error appears when Astral detects that the live account no longer matches the position state expected by the deployed strategy. Examples include: unexpected positions in assets being traded by Astral, manual purchases of assets being managed by Astral, partial manual closes of Astral-managed positions, external transfers affecting the position state, and broker liquidations.

Insufficient Funds

This error appears when the account does not have enough available cash or buying power to complete the intended trade at the required size. This can happen because of: cash withdrawals, prior account activity, broker fees or other balance changes, changes to available buying power, or manual trading outside Astral.

Order Rejected

If a broker rejects an order, the strategy is paused. Because orders are ultimately accepted or rejected by the broker, broker-side restrictions, permissions, or account conditions can prevent execution even when a strategy is otherwise deployed in Astral.

Broker Restrictions and Account Rules

Even when a strategy is successfully deployed, your account remains subject to your broker's own rules and restrictions. These can include: cash-account trading restrictions, settled-funds requirements, margin-account restrictions, minimum order requirements, asset availability restrictions, account permission limitations, and other broker-enforced compliance controls.

Two common examples are Pattern Day Trading (PDT) and Good Faith Violations (GFV).

• A Pattern Day Trader (PDT) designation generally applies to margin accounts that engage in repeated same-day round-trip trades. A common example is buying a stock and then selling that same stock later the same day, multiple times within a short period.
• A Good Faith Violation (GFV) generally applies in a cash account when a user buys a security using unsettled funds and then sells it before that purchase has been fully paid for with settled funds. For example, a user may sell one position, immediately use those unsettled proceeds to buy another security, and then sell that second security before the original sale has settled.

These requirements may vary slightly based on your brokerage firm, account type, asset class, and jurisdiction. If your broker rejects a trade or applies an account restriction for one of these reasons, your Astral strategy may be paused.

Automatic Undeployment Events

Certain account or subscription changes will cause strategies to be undeployed automatically.

This includes:

• Broker or account disconnection — If you disconnect a broker or brokerage account from Astral, any associated strategies will be undeployed.
• Subscription downgrade — If your subscription level is downgraded and no longer includes broker deployment access, all associated user strategies will be undeployed.

Source of Truth

Your broker is the source of truth for: cash balances, buying power, positions, executions, fills, and account restrictions.

Astral is the source of truth for: strategy status, deployment state, platform controls, and Astral-generated alerts or warnings.

If there is ever a difference between what Astral displays and what your broker reports for live account balances, positions, or fills, the broker record should be treated as authoritative for the account itself.

Best Practices for Live Deployment

To reduce deployment issues and account mismatches, we recommend the following:

• use a dedicated brokerage account for Astral when possible,
• deploy only one Astral strategy per account,
• avoid manual trading in the same account,
• avoid moving cash in or out of the account while a strategy is deployed,
• undeploy before making major account changes,
• confirm that the account matches the intended asset class,
• and review account restrictions and broker permissions before deploying live.