ADR-0007: Education, not investment advice

Date: 2026-06-28 Status: Accepted (design phase)

Context

Investor Flow is beginner-first and reads like a mentor (70/25 Alfred/Druckenmiller). The user is a beginner. Surfacing personalized, per-portfolio analysis in a mentor voice risks crossing the line from "educational publisher" into "investment adviser" (US SEC IA definition), which would invoke registration, fiduciary, and liability obligations the product does not assume. The user explicitly stated: "this is more of an investment education approach. not financial advice. that should be a primary rule/goal."

Decision

Investor Flow operates as an educational research terminal, not an investment adviser. This is the Primary Rule and takes precedence over every other UX principle when in conflict.

Concrete teeth

Voice: Analyst Voice teaches process and reasoning; never "buy/sell/hold this." Recommendations are reworded to considerations + questions.
RiskEngine recommendedActions: renamed in contract and UI.
- cut_to_cash → consider_reducing_position (framed: "your drawdown framework says reduce; here's the trade-off to think through")
- halt_new_entries stays (it's a guardrail on the app's own journal, not an instruction about the user's brokerage)
- trim_cluster → consider_rebalancing_cluster All carry explicit "educational, not advice" framing.
SizingEngine: outputs the math ("if risk budget is 1% and stop is $4 → ~Y shares"), never "buy Y shares."
Journal: prompts ask "what's your reasoning?" not "do this."
Alerts: "something changed in the data you're watching" not "action needed." Push informs, never directs.
Reports: every report closes with an explicit footer: "Educational analysis, not investment advice. Verify the underlying data; you are responsible for your own decisions."
LLM Gateway preamble (ADR-0005): extended to forbid imperative trade instructions; require educational framing ("a disciplined investor might consider...", "the framework raises these questions...").

Legal posture

Operates as an educational publisher. Output is framed as teaching reasoning about securities, not advising transactions. The Data-Classification Gate (ADR-0006) still keeps sensitive user thesis data local; this ADR governs output posture in addition to input handling.

Consequences

Every UI copy review and LLM prompt template reviewed against this rule.
A "Primary Rule lint": no curated string in the app may contain an unframed imperative trade directive ("buy", "sell", "you should", "add to your portfolio").
Does NOT weaken the product: education IS the moat (Alfred teaches his thesis publicly; Druckenmiller teaches adapt-don't-predict). The app is that teaching, interactive.
Subject to jurisdiction; operator-owned responsibility to display disclaimers appropriate to deployment locale.

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