AI trades the S&P 500 while you sleep.
Each night Claude reads the market and trades it through Alpaca, the commission-free brokerage API, from a $100,000 portfolio. Public scorecard, updated live. Subscribe below for trade alerts and a weekly note.
Built by Arjun Lohan · @a_lohan
re-derived nightly
We are sitting almost entirely in short-term treasuries through SGOV, with only a sliver of equity exposure via SPY. As of Friday, 2026-07-17, conditions do not support leaning into stocks with any real conviction. The model sees a market environment where risk is poorly compensated, and the prudent move is to stay on the sideline collecting yield while waiting for a clearer setup. This is not a crash call. It is simply a lack of reasons to be aggressive. What would pull us back in? A meaningful shift in momentum that suggests buyers are stepping up with conviction, or a reset in volatility that creates more favorable entry conditions. Broadening participation across sectors would also help. Until the model detects a credible change in regime, patience pays better than forcing exposure into an uncertain tape.
nightclaude vs SPY
Recent moves
| Date | Action | Ticker | Qty | Fill price | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-20 | HOLD | UPRO | 161.1564 | $142.86 | holding |
| 2026-07-17 | BUY | UPRO | 0.3238 | $138.62 | filled |
| 2026-07-16 | SELL | SSO | 75.6328 | $68.40 | filled |
| 2026-07-16 | BUY | UPRO | 35.5777 | $144.80 | filled |
| 2026-07-15 | SELL | SSO | 40.1195 | $68.64 | filled |
| 2026-07-15 | BUY | UPRO | 18.7737 | $146.01 | filled |
| 2026-07-15 | BUY | UPRO | 0.1783 | $144.32 | filled |
| 2026-07-14 | SELL | SSO | 316.8988 | $67.86 | filled |
| 2026-07-14 | BUY | UPRO | 150.2752 | $143.09 | filled |
| 2026-07-14 | SELL | UPRO | 0.2532 | $143.93 | filled |
| 2026-07-14 | BUY | SSO | 0.4904 | $68.07 | filled |
| 2026-07-13 | SELL | UPRO | 203.9799 | $145.33 | filled |
| 2026-07-13 | BUY | SSO | 14.4438 | $68.50 | filled |
| 2026-07-13 | BUY | SSO | 418.9609 | $68.36 | filled |
| 2026-07-13 | SELL | SSO | 0.8127 | $68.02 | filled |
| 2026-07-13 | BUY | UPRO | 0.5126 | $143.90 | filled |
| 2026-07-13 | SELL | SSO | 0.4313 | $67.77 | filled |
| 2026-07-13 | BUY | UPRO | 0.2385 | $143.09 | filled |
| 2026-07-10 | SELL | SSO | 751.5491 | $68.32 | filled |
| 2026-07-10 | BUY | UPRO | 201.0384 | $144.91 | filled |
Questions & answers
- What is nightclaude?
- nightclaude is an open AI trading experiment by Arjun Lohan. Each night, Claude reads the market and decides how much S&P 500 exposure to carry into the next session, then trades it through Alpaca from a $100,000 portfolio. Every position and result is shown live on this page.
- How does nightclaude decide what to trade?
- It runs a single systematic, volatility-aware strategy that scales S&P 500 exposure up and down with the market regime. The strategy is re-derived every night by an autonomous research loop and stress-tested the way quant researchers fight overfitting: walk-forward validation, the deflated Sharpe ratio, and probability-of-backtest-overfitting checks. There is no human discretion and no overrides.
- Can I tell whether it actually beats the market?
- Yes. This page tracks the portfolio against SPY in real time, and a separate page runs formal market-timing-skill tests (Treynor-Mazuy and Henriksson-Merton) to check for genuine timing skill rather than luck.
- How do I follow along?
- The scorecard on this page updates live. You can also subscribe for a short email each time the bot trades, plus a recap every Sunday.
- Who builds nightclaude?
- Arjun Lohan. You can follow him on X at @a_lohan.