A live experiment in AI trading

The Public Portfolio Challenge.

I gave AI access to $25,000 of my own money. Now there’s a second $13,500 account. Follow both portfolios, the decisions behind them, and everything I learn along the way.

View the portfolios Start with Episode 1
Austin Starks
Austin StarksFounder of NexusTrade
2 live accounts
11 episodes

The portfolios

Two accounts. Out in the open.

Explore the recorded performance, then open the actual portfolio.

Dated public data
Auto-refresh every 60 seconds
01 / The originalREAL CAPITAL

The $25,000 challenge

The account that started the experiment.

Recorded account value
$27,312.59
+9.25%vs. initial capital
EQUITY HISTORY
Mar 9, 2026Oct 14, 2026
Last observation: Oct 14, 2026, 3:58 PM EDT

Initial capital $25,000
History begins Mar 9, 2026

Open portfolio
02 / Semis + BiotechREAL CAPITAL

The $13,500 challenge

A company-level options portfolio, built from a thesis.

Recorded account value
$13,493.45
-0.05%vs. initial capital
EQUITY HISTORY
Aug 25, 2026Oct 14, 2026
Last observation: Oct 14, 2026, 3:59 PM EDT

Initial capital $13,500
History begins Aug 25, 2026

Open portfolio

Actual stored equity, with different start dates. Percentages show equity change from initial capital; deposits and withdrawals can affect them.

New observations appear automatically when the public record updates. Each account keeps its own data timestamp.

From the live accounts

The latest
on the record.

Performance observations and public order activity, with their original timestamps.

Explore the research on GitHub
Original

Recorded equity: $27,312.59

Latest account value in the stored performance history.

Semis + Biotech

Recorded equity: $13,493.45

Latest account value in the stored performance history.

Public records refresh alongside the portfolio values.

The story so far

Every chapter of the experiment.

The ideas, the trades, the bugs, and the decisions behind them.

  1. 01

    I’m giving an AI access to my Public trading account. Here’s how you can watch it destroy $25,000

    The challenge begins

    8 min read
  2. 02

    An ex-Jane Street trader told me the secret to AI trading. So I built it.

    The Jane Street secret

    6 min read
  3. 03

    I tested 11 AI models to build a $25,000 trading strategy. The results shocked me.

    11 models, one winner

    12 min read
  4. 04

    I had an AI grade its own trading strategies. Five rounds later, the first attempt was still the best.

    The optimization trap

    10 min read
  5. 05

    An AI built this trade. An AI is watching it. Tuesday at 9:30 ET, $25,000 finds out if any of it works.

    AI-designed strategy goes live

    20 min read
  6. 06

    Day 1 of trading $25,000 with AI. The strategy was the easy part.

    Day 1: the strategy was the easy part

    9 min read
  7. 07

    My AI bought a stock it shouldn't have. Then I couldn't get rid of it.

    Day 2: I couldn't close the position. So I rebuilt the risk engine.

    10 min read
  8. 08

    I'm up $2,546 in one week because I trusted an AI with my portfolio.

    Week 1 recap: +$2,546, two production bugs, and a rebuilt backtest engine

    9 min read
  9. 09

    Nine days in and my AI increased my portfolio value by over $4,000. Then I panic sold.

    Episode 9: +16.6%, an NVDA panic sell, and the Backtest Corpus Explorer

    9 min read
  10. 10

    Claude Fable 5 built me a live options strategy. It DESTROYED the market out of sample. Then the government banned it.

    Episode 10: Fable 5 crushed out-of-sample, went live, then got banned

    10 min read
  11. 11

    Moderna basically cured cancer, so I used Grok Bot to create a trading strategy on it. It's DESTROYING the market.Latest

    Episode 11: Grok Bot built two thesis books, then I rebuilt and deployed the $13.5k portfolio

    18 min read
New here? The first episode sets up the whole experiment.Begin with Episode 1

Built in public

Follow the result.
Inspect the reasoning.

The Public Portfolio Challenge is my ongoing experiment with AI and real-money trading. The accounts show the performance record. The episodes explain how the strategies, research, and infrastructure evolved.

Read the open-source record
  1. 01

    Real accounts, visible records

    Open either dashboard to explore its performance history and available portfolio details.

  2. 02

    Research you can inspect

    Find portfolio definitions, episode artifacts, and experiments in the GitHub repository.

  3. 03

    The decisions behind the numbers

    Read the full story, from the first model tests to the second live account.