VOLMIND
Trade the divergence between AI belief and market belief.
An autonomous, multi-agent options-research and trading terminal built on Alpaca — and a decision-support instrument a real desk could run alongside its existing tools.
Most “AI trading agents” stop at an opinion.
The hackathon brief asks for an agent that identifies opportunities, makes decisions, manages positions, and performs — not one that just narrates a hunch. VOLMIND’s bet is narrower and more falsifiable than “the model thinks it’ll go up”: it forms an independent probability estimate, compares it to what the options market is already pricing in, and only treats a large, well-evidenced gap between the two as a signal worth acting on.
A single LLM call agreeing with itself isn’t a strategy. So the gap has to survive scrutiny before it becomes a trade: an independent second review that can kill the idea, a risk gate with hard dollar and position-count limits, and — the part most weekend projects skip — a monitor that actually closes the position later and turns it into a realized number.
Two gates stand between a hunch and a paper order.
Three agents each form an independent view from live Alpaca data. Their combined belief is compared against the market’s own option-implied probability. What survives has to clear diligence — an adversarial second read — and then risk — hard dollar and position limits — before a single order reaches Alpaca.
Built to be distrusted by its own operator.
Every mechanism below exists because the obvious version of this project would have quietly skipped it.
Paper, always
Execution refuses to run unless ALPACA_PAPER_TRADE is the literal string "true", checked on every order — opening and closing. The Alpaca client is separately hardcoded to paper mode as defense in depth.
A gate that can say yes
The diligence reviewer weighs whether a concern is severe enough to erase the edge — not whether it can find one. Every real option carries some risk; finding one isn't sufficient grounds to kill a trade.
Risk beyond one trade
Per-trade max loss, a cap on concurrent open positions, and a daily realized-loss circuit breaker — a bad run stops the agent from digging in further the same day.
P&L, not just picks
A Position Monitor marks every open trade to market and force-closes it on schedule. That's what turns a signal into a number, and what lets agent reputation be scored against real outcomes.
The same pipeline, read instead of obeyed.
Strip out the scheduler and the auto-execution step, and what’s left is a research terminal: a per-ticker feed of AI conviction versus market pricing, a reviewed reasoning trail, and a risk gate — the same shape as the pre-trade workflow already built into a desk’s existing terminal, just running on an open pipeline instead of a closed one.
Point the graph at a scan a person triggers instead of a cron schedule, and it becomes something an analyst consults before advising a client — not a bot trading a book unattended. The autonomous loop demonstrated for the hackathon is one deployment mode of this system, not the only one it’s built for.
Where this goes from a hackathon build.
Single-leg options, one name at a time
The Options Architect currently prices the nearest-ATM contract as a single long option — the simplest strategy that could prove the pipeline end to end.
Defined-risk spreads
Vertical and calendar spreads, chosen by comparing several constructions' risk/reward against the diligence-reviewed edge, instead of always reaching for an unhedged long option.
Portfolio-level Greeks
Today's risk gate looks at one trade and a position count. The natural next step is aggregate delta/vega exposure and correlation across open positions.
A human-in-the-loop terminal mode
Scans triggered by an analyst, recommendations surfaced for sign-off, execution requiring a click — the same reasoning trail, a different consumer.
A live-mode readiness gate
Not a toggle. A staged path with its own audit trail, position-size ramps, and kill-switch — treated with the same suspicion this system already applies to its own trade ideas.