Frequently asked questions

The Time Machine drops you into a random year of real US market history — you don’t get to know which year — and gives you a portfolio of simulated money to invest. You make decisions based on the market conditions in front of you, fast-forward through the year at whatever pace you want (skip a week, skip a month, skip the whole year), and at the end, the year is revealed along with how you performed compared to the S&P 500. It’s how you build pattern recognition and emotional self-knowledge without putting real money on the line.

A structured curriculum for learning to read the market. Right now it covers individual candlesticks, candlestick patterns, and how to apply simple indicators — the foundational visual literacy that lets you make sense of what’s happening in any chart you look at. The skill tree progresses from Trailhead (the basics) toward Master Architect (advanced). It’s free, it’s at your own pace, and every node teaches one specific thing and tests that you’ve got it before moving on.

Stack is the AI coach in Pro Lab. Stack’s job isn’t to tell you what to buy — it’s to help you understand your own investing patterns. As you trade in the live-market paper portfolio, your decisions are automatically journaled. Stack reads that journal back to you, identifies patterns you might not see yourself, and helps you build on your strengths and address your blind spots. The coaching is personal, but it’s about you as an investor, not about your specific finances.

The dollars aren’t real, but everything else is. You’re trading against actual historical market data, with real price movements, real volume, and real volatility. The Time Machine drops you into a random year you don’t get to choose, and the goal is to beat the S&P 500’s performance for that year. The Pro Lab adds live-market paper trading, where you trade today’s market with simulated dollars and your decisions get logged automatically.

No. Stackivate is an educational platform with paper-trading practice. Nothing on the site executes real trades or moves real money. We exist to help you learn the craft of investing in a low-stakes environment, so that when you do put real money on the line, you’re doing it deliberately.

Time Machine is historical — you trade against past markets at compressed speed, building pattern recognition and emotional reps quickly without putting real money on the line. Pro Lab is live — you trade today’s market with simulated money in real time, with every decision automatically journaled and Stack analyzing your patterns. Time Machine teaches you that markets are real. Pro Lab teaches you who you are as an investor.

Free is the open lobby — Time Machine, the Investor’s Edge skill tree, and the chart-reading quiz. No account needed. Pro Lab is the paid tier for active practice, adding live-market paper trading, an automatic investor’s log that journals every move, and Stack — the AI coach that reads your journal back to you and helps you see your own patterns. Elite is a future tier focused on Architect, a personalized investing bot built from your style and ready to test with paper money.

There isn’t a separate trial — but the free tier isn’t a trial either. It’s the full free product, and there’s no time limit on it. The free tier alone has enough depth that most people spend serious time there before considering Pro Lab. Pay when you’re ready for live-market practice, journaling, and Stack — not before.

Yes. Pro Lab is $14.99 per month, or $143.99 per year — about 20% off the monthly rate. Yearly billing is the same Pro Lab in every other way; the only difference is the price.

Yes. There’s no contract, no minimum term, and no cancellation process beyond clicking cancel in your account settings. If you cancel, you keep access through the end of your current billing period.

If you’re not happy with Pro Lab, email us and we’ll refund you. There’s no form, no required reason, and no hoops. We’d rather know you’re not getting value and give you your money back than keep a payment from someone who isn’t being served.

Yes, anytime. You can upgrade from Free to Pro Lab whenever you’re ready, and you can downgrade from Pro Lab back to Free whenever you want. Switching between monthly and yearly Pro Lab is also straightforward — your account settings handle it directly.

Your account, your archetype results, and any progress you’ve made stay with you. If you re-subscribe later, everything is where you left it. We don’t delete or hide your data when you downgrade — you just lose access to the Pro Lab features themselves until you re-upgrade.

Credit and debit cards, processed securely through Stripe. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Link are also available at checkout depending on your device and browser. We never see or store your card number — Stripe handles all of that.

Yes. Stackivate is built to work on phones and tablets, not just desktops. Some experiences — like reading detailed charts — are easier on a larger screen, but everything is functional and usable on mobile.

Any modern browser — Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, or any browser updated within the last couple of years. We don’t support Internet Explorer. If you run into a browser-specific issue, let us know and we’ll look into it.

Not yet. We’re planning a future API that will let you export your journal and connect it to a real brokerage when you’re ready to invest with real money. For now, your journal lives inside Stackivate. We’ll announce export capability when it’s available.

Yes. Your decisions, your journal entries, your archetype results — none of it gets shared, sold, or used for anything outside making your experience of Stackivate work. We don’t build profiles of you for advertisers and we don’t sell user data. Full details are in the privacy policy.

No, and that’s intentional. Stackivate is an educational platform — we don’t provide personalized financial or investment advice. For that, you’d want to talk to a licensed financial professional. What we offer is education, structured practice, and coaching designed to help you understand investing as a craft and build your own judgment over time.

No, and we’re not required to be. Stackivate is an educational platform — we don’t execute trades, we don’t custody assets, and we don’t manage client portfolios. The investing you do on Stackivate is all paper trading with simulated money. Brokerages and investment advisers register with the SEC because they handle real money or give personalized investment advice. Neither applies to us. We’re an education-and-practice platform, and we’re built that way deliberately.

No. All payment processing happens through Stripe, and Stripe handles your card information end to end. We never see your card number, expiration date, or CVV — those go directly from you to Stripe and are never stored on our servers. The only billing-related thing we see is whether your subscription is active.

No. Stackivate is an independent education and practice platform. We don’t have referral relationships with brokerages, we don’t get paid to recommend any specific platform, and we don’t push you toward any particular service when you decide to invest with real money. The choice of where to actually invest is yours, and we don’t have a stake in it.

Personalized financial advice means recommendations tailored to your specific financial situation — what to buy, when to buy it, how much to allocate. That’s what licensed financial advisers do, and it’s regulated. Coaching is different. Stack helps you understand your own investing patterns, identify your strengths and blind spots, and build the discipline to make better decisions over time. The coaching is designed to help you build judgment over time. It’s not telling you what to invest in. It’s helping you become someone who can decide that for yourself.