
Risk Gate is an autonomous options-trading agent that runs on an Alpaca paper account and trades entirely through Alpaca's official MCP server — the "AI drives the broker" pattern. Its edge isn't a magic signal; it's discipline and honesty. How it decides: across a liquid universe (SPY, QQQ, AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, AMZN, TSLA) it forms a simple, explainable view — a 20/50-day EMA trend with a 14-day RSI filter. Uptrend → buy a call; downtrend → buy a put; otherwise no trade. Every view is a defined-risk long option, ~30 days out, nearest at-the-money. How it protects the account: hard risk gates clear every trade before it's placed — ≤2% risked per trade, ≤5 open positions, a 5% daily-loss halt, long options only (never naked), 14–60 DTE, and automatic exits at +50% take-profit / −50% stop. How it's built: an MCP client to Alpaca's alpaca-mcp-server (72 tools) — get_account_info, get_option_contracts, place_option_order, get_all_positions, close_position. It runs autonomously on a market-hours schedule (GitHub Actions, no server) and logs every decision — traded, no-signal, risk-blocked, or closed — to a public journal for a transparent record. The honesty check: we out-of-sample tested the signal; it beat buy-and-hold on 0 of 7 names. We report that openly. Risk Gate competes on discipline, safety, and transparency — not a pretended edge. Results (paper account PA327FXF8G6D, Sep 1–3): $100,000 → $101,823, +1.82%. Two automatic take-profits (+54% SPY, +74% NVDA), zero stop-losses, ~1% max drawdown, and 87 buy signals refused at the 5-position cap. One week of P&L is mostly luck — the point is an agent that's transparent, disciplined, and safe. Open source (MIT): github.com/fawad07/alpaca-options-agent
4 Sep 2026