Risk and Performance Disclosures

Effective October 19, 2026

Read this before you use Lowdraft. Investing involves risk, and you can lose some or all of the money you invest. Lowdraft is a software tool. It is not investment advice, and it does not remove risk.

Market risk

Prices of ETFs, stocks, bonds and other securities can fall sharply and stay down for long periods. Several ETFs can fall at the same time. Assets that usually protect a portfolio, such as bonds or gold, can fall when you need them.

Strategy and model risk

A Keel follows rules written in advance, and rules built on past patterns can fail when markets behave differently. Trend rules can lose money in choppy markets by selling after a drop and buying after a rise. Crash switches can trigger late, early or for no reason. A Keel that held up in the past may not hold up in the future.

Overfitting risk

A Keel that is tuned until it looks good in a back-test is often just a good description of the past. More tuned settings and shorter histories raise this risk. A better back-test is not proof of a better Keel.

Data risk

Prices, volumes, dividends, splits and other data can be wrong, late, missing or revised. Different sources can disagree. Signals, plans and orders that rely on bad data can be wrong. You are responsible for checking data and orders before you rely on them.

Software and automation risk

Software has bugs. Scheduled or automatic runs can place unwanted orders if settings, data or connections are wrong. Use paper trading first, use the limits and confirmations that the service offers, and review orders before and after they are sent.

Broker and connection risk

Your broker, its data feed or its interface can be down, slow, change without notice or reject orders. Orders can fill at different prices or sizes than planned, or not at all. Market orders, thin trading and fast markets can lead to poor fills. We do not control brokers and are not responsible for their actions.

Liquidity and cost risk

Some ETFs trade thinly and have wide spreads. Trading costs, spreads, slippage, fees and taxes reduce returns, and frequent rebalancing increases them.

Tax risk

Rebalancing can create taxable gains in taxable accounts. Tax treatment differs by account, product and person. Lowdraft does not give tax advice.

Concentration and leverage risk

Holding few ETFs, or leveraged and inverse ETFs, can lead to large, fast losses. Leveraged and inverse ETFs reset daily, can lose value in ways that differ from their stated multiple over longer periods, and are not suited to most long-term investors.

AI and imported-indicator risk

AI output can be wrong or overconfident. An indicator brought from another platform can produce different values from the original, can repaint or look ahead, and can make a back-test look better than real trading would be.

Behavior risk

A plan only works if you stick to it. Turning off a Keel after a loss, changing it after a good run, or overriding it by hand can lead to results that are very different from the plan.

No guarantee and no insurance

Lowdraft does not guarantee any result. Your broker accounts may have broker-level protections, but those do not cover investment losses, and Lowdraft accounts are not insured by SIPC, the FDIC or any government agency.

Your decision

You decide whether any Keel, signal or plan is right for your situation, goals, time horizon and ability to bear loss. If you are unsure, talk to a licensed professional before you invest.

Hypothetical Performance Disclosure

Hypothetical results. Shown for illustration only. Based on historical data and simulated trading, not actual trading. Past performance, real or simulated, does not predict future results. You can lose money.

The results shown are hypothetical. They come from a computer simulation that applies a set of rules to historical prices. They are prepared with the benefit of hindsight. No one traded these Keels with real money over the period shown, and the results do not show how any account would have done.

Hypothetical results have built-in limits. They may be fitted to the past: we and other users test many variants, and the ones that look best in a back-test tend to be the ones that fit that period’s quirks, not the ones that will work next. Most of the gain over a benchmark can come from a single event, such as avoiding one crash. The simulation uses simplified assumptions about costs (for example, a fixed number of basis points per trade), trade timing, whole-share rounding, dividends and taxes. It does not capture slippage, partial fills, liquidity, outages, data errors, trading halts, tax effects, fees or changes in market structure. Real trading results will differ, and may be worse.

Benchmarks, such as SPY buy and hold, are shown for context only. They are not a promise of any outcome, and a benchmark may differ from a Keel in holdings, risk and strategy.