Portfolios
Understand paper vs. live portfolios, positions, and cash management.
Portfolios
A portfolio is the top-level container in NexusTrade. It holds your cash, positions (stocks/crypto you own), and the strategies that automate your trading decisions.
Paper vs. Live Portfolios
NexusTrade supports two types of portfolios:
| Feature |
Paper Portfolio |
Live Portfolio |
| Real money |
No (simulated) |
Yes |
| Market data |
Real-time |
Real-time |
| Order execution |
Simulated |
Real brokerage |
| Risk |
None |
Real financial risk |
| Brokerage required |
No |
Yes |
We strongly recommend starting with paper trading to validate your strategy before risking real capital.
Portfolio Structure
Every portfolio contains:
- Cash balance: The amount of uninvested money available for new trades.
- Positions: The assets you currently hold (e.g., 10 shares of AAPL, 0.5 BTC).
- Strategies: The rules that determine when and how trades are executed. A portfolio can have multiple strategies that work together.
Creating a Portfolio
There are three ways to create a portfolio:
- From the Library: Copy a pre-built strategy set from the Strategy Library.
- With Aurora: Ask the AI to create one in natural language via Aurora.
- Manually: Click "Create Portfolio" from the Portfolios page and configure everything yourself.
Set initial portfolio value high enough for how you trade: options strategies typically need much larger starting capital than stock-only portfolios because of the 100 multiplier per contract and margin on short premium. See Options trading for default sizing guidance.
Portfolio Limits
The number of portfolios you can create depends on your subscription tier:
| Plan |
Portfolio Limit |
| Observer (Free) |
2 |
| Data-Driven Investor |
50 |
| Algorithmic Trader |
100 |
| Unstoppable Quant |
2,000 |