Dev Update: Pluto Shield: Live Testing Edition

Shields are still the powerful, micro-automations our users have come to expect. With a unique prompt and designated interface, all users at every skill level and use case will gain access to simple, wide-ranging protections to your strategies, allowing you to keep your checkbook in check.

Dev Update: Pluto Shield: Live Testing Edition
Shields are growing up, out, and beyond. Live right now, 

About a month ago, I wrote about one of our latest features, Pluto Shield, bringing secure and comprehensive risk management to our backtesting suite. Well, I hope you weren't expecting us to stop there, because it's so nice we did it twice. Re-introducing... Pluto Shield! This time, it's personal!!!

Shields are still the powerful, micro-automations our users have come to expect. With a unique prompt and designated interface, all users at every skill level and use case will gain access to simple, wide-ranging protections to your strategies, allowing you to keep your checkbook in check. Not feeling too risky? Halt your strategies if they seem to be rising unsustainably. Market deciding the line's going down for the foreseeable? Brace yourself from the worst of it and put a halt to it for as long as you tell it. For the good times and the bad, Pluto Shield is meant to keep your finances right where they're most comfortable.

So what's new?

Where You Go, It Goes Too

"Every strategy and position" you say? 

If our initial implementation of Shield was a statement of intent, this is our intent manifest. As I alluded to in a previous update, Shield would be growing up and out to meet the rest of the site. Before, Shields were simple, granular and rule/strategy specific. A great tool, but not the best instrument for every job. Now, users can tackle risk management with a larger view, a top down adjustment to everything Pluto does for you. Risk management comes in more than one shape and size, and if you have goals that should be reflected in every aspect of your portfolio, individualized Shields will inevitably lack in sweeping power where needed. These Shields are broader, smarter, and work even harder.

https://pluto.ghost.io/content/images/2022/07/Screen-Shot-2022-07-28-at-1.31.17-PM.png
Shields don't just perform for you. They tell you exactly how.

Broader how? Try live and on demand! For our Shields to be truly groundbreaking, they couldn't stay confined at the strategy and paper-trading level. They had to graduate to live trading too. And they've done that. From the day live trading goes, well, live, Pluto Shield is going to be a core component of the savvy man's toolkit.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Broader, check. Smarter, how? First off, you'll never be left in the dark. For active users, up-to-date knowledge is paramount, and we deliver. With charts that track all the applicable pieces to a portfolio that update several times a second, and a Shield-by-Shield description that always keeps you in the loop as to what it plans to do (or is already doing), the stage is set for fuller control of your finances. Second of all, this information will always be available, no matter how many strategies you make, as shown below. The intuitive way to do risk management, an a-la-carte, "choose your own involvement" system that never skimps on the detail. And if you think that there might be a chance of the system acting on your behalf in a way you don't want to replicate? Every action a Shield takes is yours for the immediate viewing. A freeze or pull will never happen without you knowing the what, when, why and how.

A veritable smorgasbord of different shields. Who says you can have too many?

And bear in mind, this isn't simply a replacement or overhaul for the "old" Shield. It's the full-on release. If anything, Shield works better when you've got both levels of integration. Why? Well, financial goals are personalized, and while you might want general, ground rules for everything you do, each strategy's got a mind of its own, and if you want a little bit less risk on the strategy you've got a ton of money in, you don't want it running buck wild while the rest of your smaller strategies are meant to. Which means that functionally, you get to set your floor, your ceiling, and your exceptions to each, all with the same system!

The log. No information is out of your reach. 

So how is Pluto Shield actually going to impact our users' experience? For starters, it's important to be reminded of just what risk management means. To manage risk is to consciously set a standard for when to stop investing. Investing is often a game of emotions, and emotional investing is one of the most common reasons for losses, minor and runaway. Pluto has always been a product about taking the emotion out of investment and replacing it with automation, analytics, and guidance from people and a community who have done before. Risk management is, naturally, par for the course. Unnecessary risk will jeopardize any portfolio, and if your strategy doesn't catch wind of a general market downturn, Shield steps in and saves the day. Literally.

With live trading fast approaching, Shield's full release comes at the perfect time to familiarize our users with the feature and these concepts in time to make the biggest impact possible. We hope you'll enjoy discovering all they have to offer. I think I'm going to go to sleep now, secure in the knowledge that even if the market tumbles off a cliff, Shield's got my back. 👋