Terms of Service

Read these three sections first

By creating an account, subscribing, or buying anything, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

1. Definitions

Specification

MeaningThe rules of a trading idea to be tested. A Specification is either a Menu Specification, built from the values on our menu (instrument, signal, external data leg, entry timing, stop and target, exit time, and market-state filter), or a Strategy Language Specification, a set of rules written in the Strategy Language.

Strategy Language

MeaningOur written format for trading rules: the markets, bars, signals, entries, stops, targets and exits a Screen can test, as listed at waypointquant.com/screener/what-you-can-test.

Research desk

MeaningThe assistant on the site, run on a third-party artificial-intelligence model, that turns what you describe into a Specification and answers questions about it.

Read-back

MeaningThe statement of a Strategy Language Specification in plain language, clause by clause, produced by our software from the Specification itself and not by the research desk.

Departure

MeaningA place where a Specification differs from what you described, as listed by the research desk.

Compute class

MeaningStandard or heavy, the class that sets how many Credits a Strategy Language Screen costs (section 6).

Screen

MeaningOne automated back-test of one Specification against our historical data, together with the statistical tests we apply to it.

Report

MeaningThe output of a Screen: the result of each gate (for a swing screen, its grade and the evidence behind it), a verdict, and hypothetical performance figures.

Add-on report

MeaningAn extra analysis of a finished Menu Screen, such as a regime read, a leak audit or a capacity estimate, bought with a Credit on the plans that offer it.

Verdict

MeaningOne of DEAD, INCONCLUSIVE or CANDIDATE; for a swing screen, a Strategy Language Screen of a rule that can hold a position overnight, one of the grades CANDIDATE, PROMISING, DOUBTFUL or DEAD. These label a statistical outcome. They are defined in the Risk Disclosure and they are not recommendations.

Credit

MeaningThe unit in which Screens and add-on reports are priced. A Menu Screen or an add-on report costs one Credit; a Strategy Language Screen costs one or two Credits, according to its compute class (section 6).

Subscription

MeaningA recurring plan that includes a stated number of Credits each billing period.

Study

MeaningA Sierra Chart custom study we publish: software you load into Sierra Chart that draws and computes on your own chart (section 7). A free Study is downloaded from the site; a paid Study is either downloaded after payment or licensed to one Sierra Chart account, as its product page says.

Services

MeaningThe website, the research desk, the Screens, the Reports, the research content, the Studies, and any other product we make available.

2. Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 18 and legally able to enter a contract. You must not be located in, or a resident of, a jurisdiction subject to comprehensive United States sanctions, and you must not be a person with whom United States persons are prohibited from dealing.

An account is for one person. You are responsible for everything done through your account and for keeping access to your email, and to any password, authenticator app or passkey you add, secure. Signing in by email always works, so access to your email is access to your account unless you have turned on two-factor codes. Tell us promptly at support@waypointquant.com if you believe someone else is using your account.

We may refuse service, close an account, or decline an order at our discretion.

3. What the Services are, and what they are not

They are a research tool. You describe a trading rule. We run it against historical market data and tell you, using a fixed set of statistical tests, whether its historical record is distinguishable from chance and what it would have produced in the past before your own costs and execution.

We also publish Studies: charting software for Sierra Chart that runs on your own computer (section 7).

What they are not

• Not advice. Nothing we provide is investment, financial, trading, legal, tax or accounting advice, a recommendation, or a solicitation to buy or sell anything. We do not know your circumstances and nothing we produce is tailored to them.
• Not a prediction. A Report describes the past. Historical results, including every figure we publish, do not indicate future results.
• Not a signal service. We do not tell you what to trade or when. We send no signals and no alerts.
• Studies send nothing. A Study runs on your own computer: it draws and computes on your own chart, places, modifies and cancels no orders, and neither connects to us nor sends us anything. Beyond a Study itself, we transmit nothing to your platform or your account.
• Not managed trading. We have no access to and no authority over any account you hold. Every trading decision, including whether to trade at all and in what size, is yours alone.
• Not a guarantee of profit. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss, including loss greater than your initial deposit. Most people who trade futures lose money.

A CANDIDATE verdict means a Specification survived our tests on historical data. It does not mean it will make money, that we trade it, or that you should. Read the Risk Disclosure at waypointquant.com/risk-disclosure before you rely on anything here.

The research desk is an AI model

The desk's replies, and the read it writes under a Report, are written by a third-party artificial-intelligence model and are not reviewed by a person before you see them. They can be incomplete or wrong: the desk can misread what you meant, leave out a condition, or explain something incorrectly. Its replies are not advice. What a Screen tests is the Specification shown to you before you run it, not the desk's reply: check the Specification.

Research content written by AI

Some of our research content, including market-statistics posts, the weekly news and the daily Trade Results summaries, is drafted by an AI model and published without a person reviewing it first. It can contain errors, and it is not advice.

Registration

We are not registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or the National Futures Association. We rely on the exemption for trading information that is not tailored to any particular client, the same for everyone who receives it.

4. Subscriptions, Credits and renewal

Renewal

Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period, at the then-current price, charged to your payment method, until you cancel. We tell you the price and the billing period before you subscribe. Your receipt shows the period you paid for, and your account's Billing page shows the date your plan renews.

Cancelling

You can cancel at any time from your account page (Account, Billing, Cancel subscription, then confirm), in the same number of steps it took to subscribe, with no phone call and no email required. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing period you have already paid for. You keep access and any unspent Credits until then, and you can resume the Subscription from the same page before that date. If the current period was never paid because a payment failed, cancelling ends the Subscription at once and nothing more is charged. Deleting your account also ends a Subscription at once, as the Refund Policy says.

Changing plans

You can move between Pro and Pro Max from your account's Billing page. An upgrade takes effect at once: you pay the prorated difference for the rest of the current period and receive the new plan's extra Credits for that share of the period. A downgrade takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for, nothing is charged when you ask for it, and you can withdraw it from the same page until then. A downgrade cannot be scheduled while a payment is overdue.

Price changes

We may change subscription prices. We will give you at least 30 days' notice by email before a change affects you, and the change takes effect at your next renewal. If you do not want the new price, cancel before it takes effect.

Credits

A Subscription's Credits are granted at the start of each billing period. A Menu Screen or an add-on report costs one Credit. A Strategy Language Screen costs one or two Credits, as section 6 says. Unspent plan Credits roll over for one month after the end of the period that granted them, and then expire. Every Credit given back because a Screen failed on our side, including both Credits of a heavy Strategy Language Screen, never expires. Credits have no cash value, are not transferable, are not redeemable for money, and are not refundable except as stated in the Refund Policy. If you cancel, unspent plan Credits expire at the end of your paid period, or at once when the Subscription ends at once. Credits given back for a failed Screen and the free Screen are not plan Credits and stay with your account while it exists; deleting your account ends all its Credits.

What each plan shows

A Report's figures and its list of trades are shown while you hold Pro or Pro Max. On Free, a Report shows the verdict and the test that decided it. If your plan ends, the Reports you already have are shown at the level your current plan gives until you subscribe again.

Free use

The free plan needs an email address we have verified. Its free Screen and its research desk questions are given once per email address, and the addresses of one mailbox count as one, as the pricing page describes. We may limit, pause or end free use, or block it for an address, at any time, for example to prevent abuse.

The research desk

Each plan includes a number of research desk questions, as the pricing page says. Questions also draw on a fair-use limit on the cost of the AI model behind the desk, and so does the desk's reading of your Screens; the limit can end a period's questions before their number is used up. Free questions can also pause until midnight UTC when the free plan's daily capacity is used up.

Capacity

Screens run on our own hardware. We do not cap how many Subscriptions we sell, but capacity is finite and Screens may be queued at busy times. We target a turnaround but we do not guarantee one. Turnaround time, including any time a page says a Screen usually takes, is not a term of this contract.

Fair use

Credits are for your own research. Reselling Reports, running Screens on behalf of other people, or sharing an account are breaches of section 9.

5. One-off purchases

Paid Studies and any other one-off products are charged once, at the price shown when you order, and are delivered as described on the product page. A paid Study is delivered either as a download, when we give you its download link after payment, or by enabling its licence on the Sierra Chart account you name at checkout, as its product page says; section 7 sets out that licence, what a Study needs, and the terms for free Studies.

6. Screens written in the Strategy Language

Who writes it, and what you confirm

On Pro and Pro Max you can describe a trading idea in your own words, and the research desk writes it as a Strategy Language Specification. The rules are yours: the desk writes down what you describe and does not choose a strategy for you. Where you leave open a setting the rules need, the desk asks you for any setting that decides the trade, gives an indicator's other settings that indicator's usual settings or the language's default, and marks each one as a default. Where the Strategy Language cannot say exactly what you described, the desk lists each departure. Before anything runs, the whole Specification is shown to you in the read-back, and you can change it. Nothing is charged until you press Run. By pressing Run you confirm that the read-back states the rules you want tested. The Screen tests the Specification as read back, not your original words, and the Report is a Report on that Specification. The read-back is not written by the desk: our software produces it from the Specification itself, so it states what will be tested.

Which plans

Strategy Language Specifications are available on Pro and Pro Max only. On Free, the desk fits your idea to the closest Menu Specification instead. If your plan ends or moves to Free, you can no longer have the desk write, or run, a Strategy Language Specification. A Strategy Language Screen already queued when your plan changes still runs, or is refunded under the Refund Policy. The Reports of Strategy Language Screens you have run stay in your account and are shown at the level your current plan gives, as Menu Reports are: on Free, the verdict and the test that decided it (for a swing screen, its grade and the probability behind it), without the figures or the list of trades.

What a Strategy Language Screen costs

It costs Credits according to its compute class, which is set by the Specification's bars, not by how long the Screen takes:

• standard, 1 Credit: daily and weekly bars, and time bars of 2 to 240 minutes;
• heavy, 2 Credits: 1-minute bars, and every bar not built on a clock (range, Renko, volume, point and figure, kagi, line break and tick bars).

Before you press Run, the review card shows what the Screen will cost and why. If you do not hold enough Credits, the Screen does not run and nothing is spent. A Screen answered from our record of an earlier, identical Specification costs the same as one computed afresh. Add-on reports are not sold on Strategy Language Screens.

Swing screens

A rule that can hold a position overnight is a swing screen. It is graded CANDIDATE, PROMISING, DOUBTFUL or DEAD, with the probability behind its grade, rather than judged gate by gate, and it is never inconclusive. The Risk Disclosure says what the grades and the probability mean and what they do not.

Not published, and not yet counted

A Strategy Language Screen is never published in our research notes, in any form. Until we say otherwise on the Risk Disclosure, Strategy Language Screens are also not counted in the published number of specifications screened or in the pass rate.

What a Report shows beside the verdict

A Strategy Language Report can show how nearby versions of your Specification did on the same history (for example, the “Neighbouring distances” line) and can offer next Screens to run. These describe the historical record and offer further tests. They are not a recommendation of any setting, no nearby version is offered as a better rule to trade, and none is said to be likelier to pass. A next Screen is a new Specification: it is charged, screened and judged on its own. The same goes for a swing screen's grade and probability: they describe the historical evidence, not what a rule will do.

The list of trades

A Report includes the list of every trade where it can. For a Specification that took more than 10,000 trades the list arrives separately after the Report, and above 100,000 trades it is not provided. If the list cannot be provided, the Report says so, every figure in it is still computed on all the trades, and the Screen counts as completed.

If we withdraw it

We may suspend or withdraw the Strategy Language under section 13. If we do, no new Strategy Language Screen can be started; a Screen already queued still runs or is refunded under the Refund Policy, and the Reports, emails and lists of trades you already have stay in your account as any other Report does.

7. Sierra Chart studies

What they are

A Study is a Sierra Chart custom study (an ACSIL DLL) that you load into Sierra Chart, a charting and trading platform run by a third party. It runs on your own computer and draws and computes on your own chart. No Study places, modifies or cancels an order. No Study connects to us or sends anything to us or anyone else, and none is tailored to you: a Study is the same for everyone who has it. A Study that reads your own trade history reads it on your computer and keeps it there.

Charting tools, not advice

What a Study draws or computes, whether a level, a zone, a range, a count or a position size, is arithmetic on the data in your own chart and on the inputs you choose. It is not advice, a recommendation or a signal to trade, and section 3 applies to it as it does to everything else we provide. We do not claim that anything a Study draws predicts price. Whether and how to use a Study's output in your trading is your decision alone.

Free Studies

Free Studies are downloaded from the site as a .zip file, free of charge, and are provided "as is" for your personal use. You may install them on computers you use yourself. You may not redistribute, resell, re-host or bundle them, in whole or in part, or remove our notices from them. We may change or withdraw a free Study at any time.

Paid Studies

A paid Study is sold for a one-time fee, at the price shown on its product page, through Stripe Checkout, and its product page says which of two ways it is delivered. A download Study is delivered when, after payment, we give you a link to download it, on the page you return to from checkout and in your receipt email. The link works for 7 days; opening it after that sends a fresh link to the email you used at checkout. For a licensed Study, you give the name of your Sierra Chart account at checkout. We then enable the Study for that account in Sierra Chart's own custom-study licensing, normally within one business day, and Sierra Chart delivers the Study to that account. Enabling the licence on the account you named is delivery. A set of Studies sold together, such as Waypoint Smart Money, is delivered when every Study in it is. If we cannot match the account name you gave, we write to the email you used at checkout; the Refund Policy says what happens if we still cannot.

Your licence

A purchase gives you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use that Study: a licensed Study on the one Sierra Chart account you named, and a download Study on computers you use yourself. A licensed Study's licence follows the Sierra Chart account name, not a computer. One purchase covers one account, or for a download Study one person, unless we agree otherwise in writing. The licence has no end date, but it ends if it is revoked as this section says. You may not sell, sublicense, lend, share or transfer the Study, its file, its download link or the licence, let anyone else use it through your account, or use a licensed Study outside the licensed account; section 9 also forbids reverse engineering it. You buy a licence, not the software: the Study remains ours (section 10). Closing an account on our site does not by itself end a paid Study's licence. If we stop selling a Study, licences already sold continue, but we need not keep updating it.

Revoking a licence

We may revoke a Study's licence, remove the Study from your Sierra Chart account and close its download link, if you breach this section or section 9, if the payment is charged back or otherwise reversed, or if the purchase is refunded. Section 17 applies, and a licence revoked for breach is not refunded.

What you need

You are responsible for your own Sierra Chart subscription and service package, for the market data a Study needs, and for checking that a Study works with your setup. Some Studies need tick-by-tick data with bid and ask volume, market depth, or particular symbols such as exchange market internals, which your data feed or Sierra Chart package may not provide or may charge extra for. Each product page says what its Study needs. Sierra Chart is a third party and section 12 applies to it: we are not responsible for its availability, its licensing system, its delivery of a Study, or changes it makes that affect one.

No warranty of fitness

Section 14 applies to every Study, free or paid. We do not warrant that a Study suits any purpose, that its output is accurate or complete, that it works with every Sierra Chart version, data feed or symbol, or that it will be updated.

8. Prices, payment and tax

Prices are in United States dollars. Payment is processed by Stripe; we do not receive or store your card number. You authorise us to charge your payment method for all amounts due, including renewals.

Prices exclude tax unless stated. Where we are required to collect sales, use, VAT or similar taxes, they are added at checkout. You are responsible for any other taxes arising from your use of the Services.

Failed payments

If a renewal payment fails, we retry it and email you a link to pay. If it is still unpaid when the retries end, the Subscription ends and its unspent plan Credits expire.

Disputed payments

If you dispute a charge with your bank or card issuer, the Subscription it paid for ends at once and its unspent plan Credits expire, and a disputed Study's download link is closed and its licence removed. Nothing is restored automatically if the dispute is decided in your favour; write to us and we will put it right.

9. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• resell, republish, redistribute or commercially exploit any Report, data set or research content, in whole or in substantial part, except that you may use your own Reports for your own trading and may quote briefly from public research content with attribution;
• share your account or use Credits for anyone other than yourself;
• access the Services by automated means other than interfaces we provide, including scraping, crawling or bulk downloading;
• attempt to derive, reconstruct or extract the underlying market data from Reports, or use Reports as a substitute for a market data feed;
• use the research desk for anything other than writing, checking and explaining Specifications, or try to make it reveal its instructions;
• share, resell, sublicense or redistribute a Study or a Study's licence, except as section 7 allows;
• reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or attempt to discover the source code of any software we provide, Studies included, or circumvent a Study's licensing, except where that restriction is unenforceable by law;
• interfere with the Services, probe them for vulnerabilities without written permission, or circumvent any limit, queue or access control;
• use the Services in violation of any law, exchange rule, or market data agreement that applies to you;
• misrepresent a Report as evidence of actual trading results, as ours, or as a guarantee, when offering anything to anyone else.

10. Your Specifications and our content

Yours

You keep ownership of the Specifications you submit. A Specification the research desk writes from your description is yours as if you had written it. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store and process them to provide the Services, to keep them in our internal research record, and to use aggregate and de-identified information about them to operate and improve the Services.

Publication

We will not publish your Specification or your Report in a form that identifies you unless you opt in. A Report whose verdict is not CANDIDATE asks whether to add the idea to our public research notes. If you say yes, we may publish it there without your name: its rules, the gate that stopped it and the figures from the run. You can withdraw that at any time, with Undo on the Report or by writing to support@waypointquant.com, and we then stop publishing it. A Strategy Language Specification and its Report are never published, and the opt-in is not offered for them.

Share links

Where a Report offers it, you can make a link to it from the Report itself. Anyone with the link sees the verdict, the gate that decided it with its one-line result (which can include the number of trades and the gate's statistics), the market and the rules in plain words, and nothing else: not your dollar figures, your list of trades, your words or your name. You decide whom to send it to. You can stop sharing at any time and the link stops working at once; making a new link replaces the old one.

Ours

The Services, the software (every Study included), the statistical methodology, the research content and everything on the site other than your Specifications belong to us or our licensors. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-transferable, non-exclusive licence to use the Services and your Reports for your own internal purposes. Studies are licensed under section 7 instead. No other rights are granted. If you send us suggestions, we may use them without obligation to you.

Names of others

Names of indicators, setups, methods, people, books, websites and products that appear on the site, in the research desk's replies or in a read-back belong to their owners and are used only to identify them. We are not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any of them, and none of them has reviewed how we describe or test their work.

11. Refunds

Refunds are governed by the Refund Policy at waypointquant.com/refund-policy, which is part of these Terms. In summary, and the summary does not replace that document:

• If a Screen fails for a technical reason on our side, we give back every Credit it cost (two for a heavy Strategy Language Screen), automatically.
• A Screen that runs successfully and returns a DEAD or INCONCLUSIVE verdict is a delivered product and is not refunded. The same goes for a swing screen, whatever its grade. You are paying for the answer, and most answers are negative. That is the point of the service.
• A first Subscription is refunded in full if you ask within 7 days and have not spent a Credit. Otherwise Subscriptions are not refunded for unused Credits or for a partial period, except where required by law.
• A licensed Study is refunded on request until its licence is enabled on your Sierra Chart account. After that, and for a download Study once its download link is given to you, it is refunded only in the cases the Refund Policy lists.

12. Third-party data and services

The Services depend on market data and infrastructure we get from third parties. Data can be delayed, incomplete, revised or wrong, feeds can fail, and providers can change or withdraw access. Some pages also show third parties' news headlines and links, which we do not write, control or check. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness or availability of third-party data or content, and we are not responsible for a third party's acts or omissions.

You are responsible for complying with any agreement you have with your own data provider, broker or trading platform.

13. Availability and changes

We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of the Services. If we discontinue a paid feature you are subscribed to, we will give you reasonable notice and a pro-rated refund for the portion you paid for and cannot use.

We do not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation, and we may take the Services down for maintenance.

14. Disclaimer of warranties

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Services are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

We do not warrant that any Report is accurate, that any reply of the research desk or any research content is accurate or complete, that any Specification will be profitable, that past statistical results will persist, or that the Services will meet your requirements.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so some of this may not apply to you.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• We are not liable for any trading loss, lost profit, lost opportunity, loss of data, loss of goodwill, or any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages arising out of or relating to the Services, whatever the theory of liability and even if we were advised the loss was possible.
• We are specifically not liable for any loss you incur from trading, whether or not the trade was based on anything you saw here.
• Our total liability for all claims arising out of or relating to the Services in any twelve-month period is limited to the amount you actually paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim.

These limits apply even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of this may not apply to you.

16. Indemnity

You will indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim, loss, liability and reasonable legal fees arising from your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the Services, your violation of any law or third-party right, or any representation you make to a third party about a Report.

17. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Services at any time and cancel from your account page. You may also delete your account from your account page; that ends any Subscription at once, as the Refund Policy says.

We may suspend or terminate your access immediately if you breach these Terms, if we are required to by law or by a data provider, or if we reasonably believe your use creates risk for us or for other users. Where the breach is capable of cure and the circumstances allow, we will tell you what is wrong and give you a chance to fix it.

While your account is suspended you are signed out everywhere and cannot sign in. We may email you our reason, and a suspended account that asks to sign in is told by email that it is suspended. If you think a suspension is a mistake, reply to that email or write to support@waypointquant.com, and we will review it. A suspension does not by itself cancel a Subscription or stop its renewals. While suspended you cannot sign in to cancel: write to support@waypointquant.com and we will cancel it for you.

On termination, your licence ends and unspent Credits are forfeited. If we terminate your account for a breach of these Terms, any Subscription ends at once and the current period is not refunded. A paid Study's licence ends only if it is revoked under section 7. Sections 3, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18 and 19 survive, and so do the restrictions on Studies in section 7.

18. Disputes

Before filing anything, email support@waypointquant.com with a description of the dispute and what you want. We will do the same. If it is not resolved within 30 days, either of us may proceed.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. The state and federal courts located in King County, Washington have exclusive jurisdiction, and both parties consent to that venue.

Any claim must be brought within one year after it arises, to the extent that limit is enforceable where you live.

19. General

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. If a change is material we will give at least 30 days' notice by email or in the app before it takes effect, and it will apply from the effective date or your next renewal, whichever is later. Continuing to use the Services after that means you accept the change. The current version is always at waypointquant.com/terms and every version is dated.

Everything else

These Terms, the Refund Policy, the Privacy Policy and the Risk Disclosure are the whole agreement between us about the Services and replace anything said before. A separate signed agreement controls over these Terms for the work it covers.

You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger or sale of the business. If any provision is unenforceable it is limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stays in force. Not enforcing a provision once does not waive it. Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by something outside our reasonable control, including exchange or data-provider outages. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, fiduciary or employment relationship.

We send notices to the email on your account. Send notices to us at support@waypointquant.com or Waypoint Quant LLC, 100 N Howard St, Ste R, Spokane, WA 99201.