Not investment or tax advice.  Educational only. Managing your own money carries real risk. A floor is one layer, not a plan. Consult a fiduciary or CPA before acting.
The DIY downside-protection stack

Fire your 1% advisor.

The median advisor charges 1% of your assets, every year — $10,000 on a $1M portfolio. Compounding does the rest: $600,000 to $2M+ gone over a retirement (NerdWallet, Evergreen).

And the one move that matters most in a bubble — protecting your downside — is the one no AUM advisor is paid to make. Their fee only survives if you stay fully invested. That single job you can do yourself, in an afternoon, with Claude and your own brokerage.

The old way
1% / yr
$10k on $1M, every year — $600k–$2M+ compounded away over a retirement
→
This build
~$0 / mo
your brokerage + Claude + a floor that only moves up

This isn't "advisors are useless" — a good flat-fee fiduciary is worth it for many people (see the honest part at the end). It's that the single most valuable move in a bubble is the one an AUM advisor structurally will never make. Here's how to make it yourself.

Four ops · one afternoon
OP 1
Connect
Claude reads your real holdings
 OP 2
Protect
The floor no advisor will set
 OP 3
Review
The quarterly check-in, for ~$0
 OP 4
Plan
Know the number you're protecting
OP 1 · connect ~20 min, once

Connect your brokerage to Claude

Before anything else, Claude has to see what you actually hold — real positions, cost basis, unrealized gains. Not a spreadsheet from last quarter. The live account.

Alpaca MCP · official docs alpacahq/alpaca-mcp-server Claude mobile (remote) Start in paper mode
  1. Open a free Alpaca account and generate API keys — start with a paper (fake-money) account until you trust the flow.
  2. Add the official Alpaca MCP server (61 actions — positions, quotes, orders) to Claude Desktop, or deploy it remotely for Claude mobile. Docs linked above; it's a config file, not a coding project.
  3. Confirm it reads you: ask Claude the prompt below and check its numbers against your account screen.
Paste into Claude
Show me my full portfolio — every position, cost basis, current value, and unrealized gain. Then tell me: which position am I most exposed on if the market drops 30% tomorrow, and does it have any downside protection?
Field note: keep it in paper mode until Claude's answers match your real account. Your keys stay yours — Claude reads through the connector; it never takes custody.

Payoff: Claude sees your real holdings on demand — the raw material for every op below.

OP 2 · protect ~10 min, once

Set the floor your advisor never will

Put an automatic floor under the positions you can't afford to lose. It rises as they climb, never falls, and sells if a crash breaches it. This is the whole reason the page exists — the one job no AUM advisor is paid to do.

FloorPricer MCP Floor simulator Why advisors won't (Grantham)
  1. Add the FloorPricer connector on top of your brokerage. It places a native broker-side trailing stop — held at the broker, enforced 24/7, and it survives restarts. Not a script that only runs while an app is open.
  2. Floor the core, not everything. Protect the money your retirement depends on; let long-horizon money ride unfloored.
  3. Run it in a Roth or IRA where a triggered sale owes no capital-gains tax — the floor works everywhere, but it's cleanest there.
Paste into Claude
Set a 10% trailing floor on the positions I named as core. Confirm each floor price and that the orders are live at the broker. If any core position has no floor, tell me.
Honest limit: a floor can whipsaw you out before a recovery, sells at the next market price (not exactly the floor), and can't stop overnight gaps. It's for money you can't afford to watch fall — not for timing the market.

Payoff: a crash can't force you to sell your retirement at the bottom.

OP 3 · review 10 min / quarter

Run your own quarterly review

The recurring check-in you were paying 1% for. With both connectors on, Claude does it in one message — reading your live positions, not a memory of them.

Claude Save it as a Project Or schedule it
  1. Paste the prompt below each quarter. Save it as a Claude Project so next quarter it's one click, not a ritual.
  2. Change one thing — re-floor a position that's grown, trim what's overweight — and let next quarter's data prove whether it worked.
Paste into Claude
Review my portfolio this quarter. Tell me in plain English: (1) my total value and how it moved, (2) anything overweight or concentrated, (3) which positions I can't afford to lose that have no floor, and (4) the ONE change that would most reduce my downside. Keep it short and specific.
Field note: keep the review to one or two changes. A review that dumps ten fixes gets ignored; one that says "floor your Nvidia, it's now 40% of your account" actually gets done.

Payoff: the 1% job, done quarterly, for ~$0.

OP 4 · plan ~15 min, once a year

Know your number first

Before you protect the pile, know how big it actually needs to be. Most people are closer to "enough" than anyone paid by the pile ever told them.

Are you already free? How much can you spend? Sell tax-free?

Our free Better Money Decisions tools do the planning an advisor charges for: the portfolio you actually need for the life you want, how much you can sustainably spend, and how much you can sell tax-free this year. Start there — protection only matters once you know what you're protecting and why.

Payoff: you protect a number that means something — not just "everything, forever."

The honest part

When you should actually hire a human

Firing the fee isn't the same as firing the function. We'd rather you know exactly where the line is than pretend there isn't one. A good advisor earns their keep on the things Claude and a floor don't do:

  • Behavioral coaching — the biggest real value of an advisor is stopping you from panic-selling at the bottom. A floor does part of this by making the exit a rule, not a feeling — but a human who talks you off the ledge is worth a lot.
  • Complex taxes and estate — Roth conversions, trusts, business sales, inheritance. Get a pro.
  • You won't do it yourself — if this guide sounds like a chore you'll skip, an advisor who actually does it beats a perfect plan you never run.

If you do hire, favor flat-fee or advice-only fiduciaries over the 1%-of-assets model — on a $1M+ portfolio the flat fee can save hundreds of thousands to millions over a retirement, for the same advice.

The floor is the one thing worth automating.

FloorPricer is the connector that sets and holds it — broker-enforced, cooperative-owned, honest about what it can't do. Paper trading is free; live is on the waitlist.

Join the waitlist →
Not ready? Try the floor simulator — see what a 10% floor would have done in past crashes.