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Connecting your broker (deep)

How Tradient links to your brokerage via SnapTrade — what we read, what we don't, and how to manage the connection over time.

7 min readsnaptradebrokerssecurity

Tradient links to your brokerage through SnapTrade, a regulated aggregator that handles the OAuth dance and normalizes positions across 20+ U.S. brokers. This page is the deep version: what data flows where, what permissions we hold, and how to recover when something goes wrong.

The data flow

When you click “Connect broker” in Portfolio, the following happens in order:

  1. Tradient asks SnapTrade to mint a single-use Connection Portal URL scoped to your Tradient user id.
  2. We open that URL in a popup. SnapTrade walks you through your broker’s OAuth flow — you log into your broker, not into SnapTrade.
  3. Your broker returns an OAuth grant to SnapTrade. SnapTrade stores the refresh token; we never see it.
  4. SnapTrade hands Tradient back a userSecret which we store on your user row. This is the only credential Tradient holds, and it’s scoped to read-only operations + explicit user-confirmed trades.
  5. Tradient syncs your positions, balances, and option holdings into Portfolio.

What Tradient can read

  • Account list and metadata (account name, type, broker).
  • Cash and equity balances.
  • Stock positions (ticker, quantity, average cost).
  • Option positions (OCC symbol, quantity, average cost).
  • Open and historical orders for state reconciliation.

What Tradient cannot do

  • We cannot withdraw, transfer, or move money. The SnapTrade scope does not include cash management.
  • We cannot place trades silently.Every order requires you to click “Confirm” on a preview screen that shows broker-confirmed price, fees, and buying-power impact.
  • We cannot see your login or password. The OAuth flow keeps those between you and your broker.
  • We cannot persist tokens we don’t need. The userSecret is the only credential and it’s revocable from your settings page at any time.
Aside
The actual SnapTrade integration uses HMAC-SHA256 signed requests on every call, with userId and userSecret passed as query params (never headers, never body). Each call is independently signed and short-lived. There is no persistent session.

Supported brokers

SnapTrade supports the major U.S. retail brokers including Interactive Brokers, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, E*TRADE, Robinhood, Webull, Tradier, tastytrade, and TradeStation. The full list (and which ones support options trading vs. read-only) is available on snaptrade.com/brokerages.

TD Ameritrade is gone — the Schwab acquisition closed the old TDA API. If you used TDA, reconnect via Schwab.

Sync cadence

  • On-demand sync when you open Portfolio.
  • Background refresh every 15 minutes during U.S. market hours.
  • Webhook updatesfrom SnapTrade when an order fills (so you don’t have to refresh manually after placing a trade through Tradient).

Reconnecting and disconnecting

Brokers occasionally invalidate OAuth tokens — usually after password changes or extended idle periods. If that happens, Portfolio shows a yellow “reconnect” banner on the affected account. Click it to walk through the Connection Portal again; the existing positions stay where they are.

To remove a broker entirely, go to Settings → Connected Brokers and click Disconnect. This calls removeBrokerageAuthorizationon SnapTrade, which revokes the OAuth grant on the broker side. Your historical positions in Tradient are kept (so the History tab doesn’t develop holes) but new syncs stop.

Multiple accounts

Most users connect 1-3 accounts (a taxable, a Roth, maybe a margin). Tradient treats each connected account as an independent unit:

  • Positions are scoped per-account.
  • Orders go to one specific account at a time.
  • Capital sizing in Radar uses the account you’ve marked as “default” in settings.
  • Focus mode analyses can roll up across accounts when you ask for a portfolio-level view.

Common issues

  • “Account connected but no positions.” Sub-accounts on IBKR sometimes need to be enabled individually in IBKR’s API settings. Check Account Management → Settings → API.
  • “Option positions missing.” Some brokers (Robinhood) only expose options through a separate API surface. SnapTrade handles this transparently but the first sync after connecting can lag by a few minutes.
  • “Buying power looks wrong.” Margin calculations differ across brokers. Tradient shows what SnapTrade reports, which is what your broker reports. If the number is wrong on Tradient, it’s wrong at your broker too — usually a pending settlement.

Where to go next