Margin and active trading can produce rapid losses, losses greater than cash initially committed, debit balances, margin calls, and liquidation without advance notice. Your broker - not Atlas - extends credit, calculates buying power, imposes account restrictions, and controls liquidation.
1. Scope
This disclosure supplements the Terms, the Trading, Automation and Brokerage Risk Disclosure, and your broker's margin and account agreements. Your broker extends credit, calculates buying power and house requirements, approves margin or short selling, determines account restrictions, and may liquidate positions. The broker's current terms and official records control your brokerage account.
2. Margin Can Magnify Loss
Margin allows you to purchase or hold positions using credit extended by your broker. It magnifies both gains and losses. You can lose more than the cash or securities initially committed, owe a debit balance after liquidation, and be required to deposit additional cash or securities on short notice.
Atlas strategies are designed around 1:1 leverage. Enabling the Allow Margin Trading control or otherwise using borrowed buying power is your decision and can materially increase risk. Compatibility with a margin-designated account does not mean Atlas recommends leverage.
3. Margin Calls and Liquidation Without Advance Notice
Your broker may issue a margin call, but it may also liquidate securities or other positions without contacting you first, choose which positions to liquidate, change maintenance or house requirements at any time, decline an extension, restrict trading, or close the account under its agreements. You may have no right to choose the assets sold or the timing or price of liquidation.
4. House Requirements Can Exceed Regulatory Minimums
Regulatory minimums are not a promise of available credit. A broker may impose more restrictive concentration, volatility, liquidity, security-specific, or account-specific requirements, including intraday. Atlas does not control those requirements and may receive delayed or incomplete buying-power information through an API.
5. Intraday and Day-Trading Requirements During the FINRA Transition
FINRA's new intraday-margin framework became effective June 4, 2026, and member firms may transition through October 20, 2027. During that period, treatment can depend on the broker and its implementation schedule. Do not assume that a historical pattern-day-trader label or $25,000 minimum applies universally, or that a broker has already adopted the new framework. Review the broker's current written rules before trading.
6. Active Trading Is Highly Risky
Day trading and other high-frequency or high-turnover activity can produce rapid losses, substantial transaction costs, tax consequences, and operational strain. Volatility, leverage, concentration, and repeated automated orders can cause losses to accumulate before you can intervene. Do not expose money needed for living expenses, emergencies, education, retirement, or debt obligations to trading risk.
7. Short Selling and Borrow Risk
A short position can generate theoretically unlimited loss because a security's price can continue to rise. Shares may be hard to borrow; borrow fees can change; a lender may recall shares; and a broker may buy in or close a position. A located share or displayed borrow rate is not guaranteed to remain available. Corporate actions, halts, and squeezes can amplify risk.
8. Cash-Account Settlement and Payment Violations
Cash accounts remain subject to payment and settlement requirements. Using proceeds or selling securities in a sequence that violates the broker's settled-funds rules may produce good-faith, freeriding, or other restrictions. Atlas cannot guarantee that displayed buying power reflects every settlement condition or brokerage restriction.
9. Concentrated, Volatile, and Hard-to-Borrow Positions
A broker may apply special margin, deny new positions, or liquidate holdings in volatile, concentrated, low-priced, leveraged, thinly traded, or hard-to-borrow securities. Diversification labels or per-strategy allocation settings do not guarantee that the total account will be diversified or within a predetermined risk limit.
10. Automation-Specific Margin Risk
Automated strategies can submit new orders before a prior fill, cancellation, deposit, liquidation, or buying-power change is reflected. Multiple strategies can compete for the same buying power. Stale balances, partial fills, rejected cancels, manual trades, and broker risk controls can leave exposure materially different from the strategy's expected state.
11. Stops, Daily Loss Limits, and Take-Profit Controls
These controls are operational instructions, not insurance or guaranteed account-level limits. Gaps, halts, illiquidity, stale data, rejected orders, broker liquidation, partial fills, and outages can cause realized losses or reversals larger than the configured amount.
12. Direct Broker Access and Authoritative Records
Maintain direct access to your broker, review confirmations and margin notices, and know how to cancel orders or reduce exposure without Atlas. If Atlas and broker information differ, use the broker's official record and controls to manage risk.
13. Required Acknowledgment
Before a margin-, intraday-, or short-capable feature is enabled, Atlas may record your account, brokerage, feature and version, disclosure version, timestamp, and affirmative acknowledgment. By enabling the feature, you acknowledge that margin can create losses greater than amounts deposited; the broker may change requirements or liquidate without advance notice; intraday rules are broker-specific; the Allow Margin Trading control is your decision; and automation and risk settings do not guarantee a loss limit.