Sunday, for Astor

You can’t execute. So the reasoning is the product.

Wealthfront rebalances without asking. Astor has to convince someone to open their brokerage, sell, and carry the tax — your Terms say it plainly: “You are solely responsible for implementing any recommendations.” So the grounds belong in the moment the advice is given.

I’m Carl, I design fintech products. I rebuilt the advice surface on your own home screen and your own ADV Item 4 list — no brief, no access. It’s live below.

The concept, running

It’s live — tell it something’s wrong.

Same advice. Something to weigh it against.

Nothing here is a new model or a new recommendation. Same sentence, same amount, same nav. What changed is that the sentence now arrives with what it was computed from, how old each of those inputs is, and what it would say under a different profile. Change one and the amount recomputes in front of you.

It appears. The market moves, or a client updates their profile, and the model produces a recommendation. That part already works — it is the part they pay for.

Four decisions, and why:

Risk tolerance8 months agoModerate
Horizon8 months ago20+ years
HoldingsLive2 accounts

Every input, with its age

The list is ADV Item 4’s own. The second line is the age — because a profile from onboarding and a holding read this morning are not the same kind of fact.

International share of stocksTarget 25%13.5%

The gap, not a forecast

Move $12,000 could be 13.5% to 25% or 24% to 25% — same action, different thing. The fill is what they own, the marker what they should, and correcting the profile moves only the marker.

What would change it

If horizon were 3 years

not worth doing

If risk were high

$19,315 into international stocks

What would change it

The same recommendation, recomputed under a different profile and set beside itself. That is what turns an authoritative sentence into a judgeable one — the failure your own ADV Item 8B names in advance.

You make the move

BrokerageSelling here is taxable$36,450

Where the trade happens

No tax figure — that needs cost basis and a state I can’t establish. That it is taxable in the brokerage and is not in the 401(k) is true without calculating.

Read more → may already hold all of this. I can’t see behind it, and that isn’t the argument. The argument is that a conclusion and its grounds should arrive together.

A bit about me.

I’m Carl. I run Sunday, a product-design studio for fintech. Before this, Swedbank. I work embedded, like part of the team, from first research to the final interface.

The portfolio in it is fictional and labelled as such. Wired to what your model actually computes, this gets a lot sharper.

“He champions user-centered design without ever losing sight of how it drives real business outcomes. That balance is rare.”
Joackim Zwahlen — UX Lead, Swedbank

That’s the idea.

You have 298 clients who each have to carry a recommendation somewhere else to act on it. Grab 30 minutes and I’ll walk you through where the grounds go — or a two-week sprint makes this shippable.