The Test Suite
Every AI investing tool that gets reviewed on this site runs through the same four-step process. No exceptions, no sponsored shortcuts, no “the vendor sent me a demo account so I’ll just describe what they showed me.”
01
Install
I sign up the way you would — same email, same tier, same onboarding flow. No dev sandbox, no “let me show you the enterprise version,” no vendor walking me through it on a Zoom call. If the free trial requires a credit card and buries the cancellation flow three menus deep, that’s not a footnote. That’s the review.
02
Run
Real money, real portfolio, tracked over a real time window — never less than 30 days, usually longer. A backtest is marketing copy the vendor generated after the fact to make their tool look smart. Live performance, in a real account, with real fees eating into it, is the only number that means anything.
03
Debug
Every tool has a failure case — bad data, a hallucinated number, a recommendation that quietly ignores your risk tolerance, a fee structure that only makes sense once you’ve read the ToS twice. Twenty years of debugging other people’s software taught me where to go looking. This is the step most reviews skip, because it takes longer than screenshotting the dashboard.
04
Ship
One of three verdicts. Pass — it does what it claims, worth the money. Skip — don’t waste your subscription. Wait — promising, but not ready yet. No 6.5-out-of-10s that don’t tell you anything. You’ll know exactly what to do before you close the tab.
What doesn’t happen here.
A methodology is only as good as what it refuses to do.
No pay-to-play reviews
A vendor can’t buy a better verdict. If that changes the business model, the review section stops existing before the policy does.
No demo-account reviews
Vendor sandboxes are built to look good. If I haven’t run it with my own account and my own money, it doesn’t get published.
No vague scores
“7.5/10, solid tool” tells you nothing. Every review ends in Pass, Skip, or Wait — and why.
No hiding the fine print
If the fee structure, data retention policy, or cancellation flow is a problem, it’s in the review — not a footnote you have to go find yourself.
I’ve spent 20 years being the person who finds out software doesn’t do what the sales deck said.
That’s not a marketing angle — it’s a Navy background and two decades of IT and sysadmin work, where “does this actually work” was a daily, unglamorous question with real consequences. AI investing tools get the benefit of the doubt from almost everyone covering them right now. This site doesn’t extend that courtesy. It runs the tool, watches where it breaks, and tells you straight.