On September 16 — the bot’s tenth trading day — it sold the whole book because one hold rule said so. Ten sessions is too short when the account is still small. Commission plus FX eats the trade before the idea has time to work. I stretched the hold to 15 trading days.

The next day I installed a VPN and did not think about the Gateway. The remote GrokBot box was already flaky for a lot of us that week. After the remote side recovered, mine still sat on its hands for seven trading days. Last week’s dips were buyable. It bought nothing.

Friday I stopped calling it patience. Over the weekend Grok pointed at the new VPN. I uninstalled it.

Monday it filled two tickets and left cash. Pfizer ($PFE): 13 shares at $28.715, about 3,725 SEK (38% of the book), $1 commission, stop at $26.01, +12 mark at $32.34. Apple ($AAPL): one share at $339.765, about 3,391 SEK (35%), same $1 ticket, stop at $307.87, +12 at $382.89. Both clocks run to 16 October — day 15. It tried XLK first. IBKR blocked the ETF; no KID, so U.S. ETFs stay off this account. After the fills: net liq 9,787.63 SEK, cash 2,638.48 SEK. Roughly 73% invested.

I told Grok what it bought. It answered like a bookkeeper with a pulse: tickers, size, price, SEK, percent of capital. Unsettling, in a useful way.

Related: Our brokers and accounts

If you want the setup, it is here: https://x.com/LDewlar/status/2100282830152417748

Seeing “TradeBot is working” felt bigger than it was. Kevin Mitnick I am not. Max Malekith is number one on HackerDNA’s lab leaderboard. I uninstalled a VPN.

Have you ever felt sharper than the trade log later allowed?