TMPoncini
Creator
Matthew Poncini
Type
Founder
About Monstra
Build a portfolio of trading bots, not just stocks.
Monstra lets users follow algorithmic strategy bots, combine them into Titan portfolios, and track signals driven by Vectors. When connected to a paper brokerage, users can review and initiate paper trades based on those signals.
Educational simulation platform. Not financial advice.
Core experience
Strategy discovery, portfolio simulation, and paper-trading review in one place.
Built for clarity
Plain-language explanations, visible risk framing, and user-controlled actions.
Paper-first workflow
Review bot signals before any supported paper trade initiation.
Why Monstra Exists
A message from the founder
Investing has a lot of mixed signals. What is safe? What is dumb? I’ve heard, “Your best bet is to put all your money in the S&P 500.” “You can’t predict the market, Wall Street controls the market and they’ll eat you alive.” “Why is having half of my money in Nvidia dumb? I’ve made so much money!”
I started building Monstra in March of 2026, during my last semester of my Master’s degree at the University of Louisville, where I studied Computer Science. As I started my masters, ChatGPT was becoming a verb: “ChatGPT this, ChatGPT that. Did you check on ChatGPT?” Debugging code became increasingly easy, and by the time my masters had ended, writing code had become increasingly irrelevant.
The question came about: what will AI do to investing? Of course, you can ask Claude about your portfolio, or even ask Claude for stock picks. I used AI to teach me about strategies. “What are the strategies that quants use?” “Would this strategy work? How do I test it? Make me an .ipynb file.” Monstra is the living publication of this type of research.
I want to share the way I think about trading — that’s why I decided to build Monstra. The idea for Monstra was to use a pun: trading cards that actually traded stocks online. While investing is clearly not a game, I wanted the UX to feel like a game, because that invites strategic thinking. You have a team of bots, and you pick the strategy that manages the bots. Add armor to your Monstra Bots to strengthen their performance, but too much armor may weigh them down.
The algorithms on Monstra are not novel ideas that I came up with; they are standard to the quantitative space. I wanted to make them accessible to anyone who wanted to use them. Every stock in Monstra’s universe is assigned a Vector. Those Vectors are how each algorithm finds the stocks it wants, based on the attributes it is looking for: momentum, trend quality, relative strength, downside risk. The Monstra Bots then manage the stock allocation according to their assigned strategy.
What I believe is novel about Monstra is the use of Titans: the algorithmic layer over the Monstra Bots. You manage the Titans, the Titans manage the Monstra Bots, and the Monstra Bots manage the stocks. The Titan layer allocates how much weight each bot gets in a portfolio. You configure each Titan with the Monstra Bots you pick.
Monstra is six months old. What runs today: over 40 Monstra Bots across five algorithm families, Vectors updating against the market, Titans allocating live paper portfolios you can watch on the homepage, Alpaca paper sync, and the API. New algorithm ideas are publicly displayed while they are in research. New Titans and Monstra Bots will enter the site as time goes on.
— Matthew
What Monstra Is
A simpler way to understand how Monstra fits together
Monstra is a strategy engine: pick bots, combine them into a Titan, and see what they're actually doing before you act.
Titans
Combine bots into a single portfolio using a Titan strategy: Aequus for manual allocation, Ordo for automatic top-N ranking, or Libra for continuous performance-based weighting.
Vectors
Every stock in Monstra's universe is scored across factors like momentum, trend quality, relative strength, and downside risk. Bots react as these Vectors update with the market.
Signals & Simulation
Each bot updates its modeled holdings from algorithmic rules reacting to Vectors. Monstra turns those updates into a portfolio view you can review, compare, and track over time.
Paper Brokerage Sync
When you connect a supported paper brokerage, you can review suggested paper trades based on bot signals and decide whether to initiate them yourself.
How It Works
From selecting bots to tracking outcomes
The product flow is meant to stay understandable at each step, especially for users who are comfortable with investing concepts but not necessarily with technical trading systems.
1
Choose bots
2
Combine them into a Titan portfolio
3
Review current holdings and signals
4
Sync automatically to Alpaca paper trading
Bots & Strategies
What Monstra bots are, and what they are not
Official bots give you a starting point. Every Monstra user gets access to all of them.
Official bots
Official bots are Monstra-managed strategies built into the platform, a clear starting point for exploring different rule-based approaches.
Access
What's free right now
Monstra is in active development. Everything is free while we build.
Bot access
Every official Monstra bot is free to use, for every Monstra user.
In-app currencies are internal platform credits. They have no cash value and cannot be withdrawn, sold, transferred outside Monstra, redeemed for money, or exchanged for cash.
Safety & Trust
Designed to keep the review step visible
You can see what the software does, what you still control, and where the risk sits.
Paper trading first
Brokerage-connected workflows are designed around paper trading so users can evaluate the experience without committing real capital through Monstra.
User-initiated execution
Users review information and choose whether to initiate supported paper trade actions. Monstra is not presented as a hands-off auto-trading service.
Stale signal protection
Signals can become outdated because markets move and systems depend on data freshness. Monstra includes safeguards so stale information is surfaced as a risk instead of being treated as current by default.
Risk disclosures
The platform links to dedicated legal and risk pages so users can understand the limitations, assumptions, and operational risks behind simulations and paper workflows.
No guaranteed returns
Bot rankings, past performance, and simulations are not promises. Monstra is for education, exploration, and structured review of strategy outputs.
FAQ
Common questions, answered plainly
What is Monstra?
Monstra is an educational simulation platform where users can follow algorithmic trading bots, combine them into portfolios, review signals and modeled holdings, and optionally connect a paper brokerage to review paper trade actions.
Is Monstra a brokerage?
No. Monstra is not a brokerage. It is a platform for strategy discovery, simulation, and paper-trading related workflows.
Is this real money trading?
The brokerage-related flow described on this page is paper trading first. It is built for simulated execution and review rather than live money trading through Monstra.
What is a trading bot?
A trading bot in Monstra is an algorithmic strategy. It uses predefined rules to model signals and holdings. It is software logic, not a human advisor.
What are Titans?
Titans are different strategies for combining bots into a single portfolio. Aequus uses manual allocation, Ordo automatically ranks and weights the top-performing bots, and Libra continuously reweights based on ongoing performance.
What is Vectors?
Vectors is Monstra's per-stock scoring system. Each ticker is scored across factors like momentum, trend quality, relative strength, and downside risk, and Monstra's bots react as those scores update with the market.
What does it cost to deploy a bot?
Nothing. Every official Monstra bot is free to deploy, for every user.
What is Creo?
Creo is the platform currency used for AI Autofill and other bot-building tools. Bot creation is temporarily paused, so some Creo spending options are limited until it returns.
Can I connect a brokerage?
Yes. If supported in your account and region, you may be able to connect a paper brokerage such as Alpaca paper trading for review and initiation of paper trades based on bot signals.
Does Monstra place trades automatically?
No. The intended workflow is user reviewed and user initiated. Monstra shows you what a strategy is signaling and lets you decide whether to proceed in supported paper workflows.
What happens if bot signals are stale?
If signals are stale, they should not be treated as current market instructions. Monstra surfaces data freshness as part of the review process so users can avoid acting on outdated information.
Can I create my own bot?
Not right now. Bot creation is on hold while we focus on Monstra's official bots. You can still build your own strategy by choosing which official bots go into your Titan and how they're weighted.
Why use a portfolio of bots instead of one bot?
A portfolio of bots can help users compare and combine different strategy styles instead of concentrating entirely on one ruleset. That makes experimentation and review more flexible.
Legal
Read the supporting disclosures
These pages explain the legal, privacy, and risk context around the Monstra experience.