What can you ask an AI financial assistant about your money?

A general chatbot answers from what it was trained on and whatever you paste into the box. An AI financial assistant built for investing has three more sources, and the quality of an answer depends on which of them it can reach.

Your accounts. With a brokerage connected, Walnut's assistant reads your holdings, your baskets and their target weights, your goal, your orders, your notifications and any recurring investments. It pulls these at the moment you ask rather than from a copy you typed in last month.

Your profile. It keeps a short record of how you invest: risk tolerance, time horizon, experience, and what you do and do not want to own. That is why the same question can get a different answer for two people.

Current news. For prices, headlines and anything that happened recently, it runs a web search (up to five searches per request in Walnut) instead of guessing from old training data.

While it works, the chat shows what it is doing: "Reading your portfolio", "Reading your profile", "Searching the web". Every number in the reply is supposed to come from one of those calls. If a figure appears that you cannot trace, asking "where did that number come from?" is a fair follow-up.

These are the questions a connected assistant answers best, because they depend on the exact mix you hold and a general chatbot has no way to know it.

• "How has my portfolio done against the S&P 500 over the last year?"
• "Which of my holdings are lagging the market, and by how much?"
• "Am I too heavy in tech? What percentage of everything I own is one sector?"
• "What is my largest position as a share of the total?"
• "I hold three ETFs. How much do they overlap?"
• "What changed in my portfolio this week, and why?"

A good answer comes back with your own percentages: "NVDA is 32% of everything you hold, your largest position by far" rather than a paragraph about the general case for diversification. Walnut's dashboard also sorts each holding into outperforming, in line or lagging against the S&P 500, so you can ask the assistant to explain any one of those labels. One limit worth knowing: brokers do not pass Walnut your cost basis, so performance is measured as price return over a period, not as profit on what you paid.

You do not need to own something to ask about it. The answer gets more specific when it can relate the stock to what you already hold.

• "What did Microsoft say on its last earnings call, in plain English?"
• "Why did this stock drop 8% today?"
• "How does VOO compare with what I already own?"
• "If I added a semiconductor ETF, how much more chip exposure would I have?"
• "What are the main risks people discuss for this company?"

For anything recent, the reply leans on the web search, so it should name or link where the information came from. For the step-by-step version of this, see how to analyze a stock with AI and how to compare two stocks with AI.

Planning questions work when the assistant knows the target and the timeline. If you have set a goal in Walnut, it reads it; if you mention one in chat, it can save it.

• "Am I on track to reach $500,000 by 2040 at my current pace?"
• "My 401(k) is at my employer and you cannot see it. It has about $85,000. Count it toward my goal."
• "How much would I need to add each month to close the gap?"
• "Which of my recurring investments ran this month, and did any get skipped?"

The 401(k) example matters. Walnut can record a balance for an account it cannot connect to, such as a workplace plan or a pension. That balance counts toward your net worth and goal progress and is labelled as self-reported everywhere. It stores a balance only, never the holdings inside, and the assistant will not give buy or sell views on what is in an account it cannot verify. More on this in how to set investment goals with AI.

Some of the most useful requests are not questions. You can ask the assistant to watch something between conversations and tell you when it happens.

• "Tell me when VIAV goes above 50."
• "Let me know if NVDA moves more than 5% in a day."
• "Remind me the day before Apple reports earnings."
• "Send me a portfolio recap every Monday morning."

In Walnut these become watches, checked hourly and delivered by notification and email. Prices are delayed market data, so a watch is a notice, not a stop or limit order. You can hold up to 25 active watches and pause or stop any of them on the Watches page.

You can also ask it to build things: "Make a basket of the five largest AI chip companies, equally weighted", or "Show me what it would take to bring this basket back to its target weights." Where your broker accepts orders through Walnut, it can prepare the trades too. It always shows a preview, and nothing is placed until you say yes. Orders you approve go to Public, to Robinhood (into a Robinhood Agentic account, while your main Robinhood account stays view-only to outside apps), or to E*Trade, tastytrade, Webull (US and Canada), moomoo, Questrade, Wealthsimple, Trading 212 or Stake (Australia). Accounts at other brokers, such as Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard, are read in full so the assistant can answer about them, but orders are not placed there.

The point of memory is that you should not have to introduce yourself every time. Walnut keeps an investor profile for each person, separate from the goal itself. The goal is the why (a house, retirement, a number by a date). The profile is the how.

Three rules shape how this works in practice.

It asks at most two questions per conversation. If you came to look up a stock, you get the answer, not a questionnaire. The rest is picked up by listening: say "I am thinking ten years out" in passing and the horizon is saved.

It knows the difference between what you said and what it guessed. A fact you stated is used as given. A fact it inferred ("seems comfortable with volatility") is kept but treated as unconfirmed, and the assistant may check it with you once rather than quietly relying on it.

Old facts get rechecked. Risk tolerance shifts with a new job, a child or a first bad market. After a year, the assistant still uses a saved fact but may confirm it once instead of treating it as fresh. Where your goal and your chat disagree on horizon, the goal wins, because you filled it in on purpose.

Conversations are saved as well, so you can return to an earlier thread and pick up where you stopped.

A profile you cannot correct is a profile you cannot trust, so all of it is visible.

• Open Settings and find Your investor profile, described there as what the assistant has learned about you and how to correct it.
• Each fact has a dot. A filled dot means you set it. A hollow dot means the assistant inferred it.
• Edit any fact directly, for example moving risk tolerance from aggressive to moderate.
• Press Clear everything to wipe the profile and start again.
• Or say it in chat: "I am more conservative than you think" or "Stop suggesting tobacco stocks." It updates the profile in the same turn.

The profile changes how answers are framed, not the facts in them. A conservative investor and an aggressive one asking about the same 32% position see the same 32%; what differs is how the assistant describes the options around it.

Yes, on the web. A photo is the quickest way to show the assistant something it cannot connect to, and typing out twenty positions by hand is the alternative.

• Up to four photos per message, in JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF.
• Each photo can be up to about 3 MB; the browser shrinks large images before sending.
• Good candidates: an options position, a 401(k) plan page, a statement, a chart, or a broker you have not connected.
• The mobile app cannot attach photos yet. In the app, the assistant asks you to type the details or to attach the image at walnutinvest.com.

What it reads from a photo is treated as self-reported. It uses it for the rest of that conversation, but it does not record the contents as holdings, and nothing in a screenshot changes your dashboard or your baskets. That is deliberate: a misread digit in a photo should not quietly become a position Walnut reports back to you as fact.

Before sending a screenshot of any financial account, crop or cover what the question does not need, such as full account numbers. The assistant needs the tickers, share counts and values, not your account number.

AI answers can be wrong in confident language. The January 2024 investor alert on AI and investment fraud from the SEC's Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, NASAA and FINRA puts it directly: "Even when based on accurate input, information resulting from AI can be faulty, or even completely made up." The same alert lists claims of "high guaranteed investment returns with little or no risk" as a classic warning sign of fraud, AI branding or not.

That shapes how to use any assistant, including this one:

• Check figures that drive a decision against your broker's own statement.
• Treat a view on a stock as one input, not a forecast. No tool knows where a price goes next.
• Expect it to say what it cannot see. A good assistant names the gap ("your 401(k) is not connected") instead of filling it with an assumption.

A few things Walnut's assistant does not do at all. It does not move money from your bank; recurring investments spend cash that is already at your broker. It does not trade without your yes. It does not answer from a screenshot as if it were verified data. Walnut is not a registered investment adviser, and its answers are general information rather than personalized advice. If you want a licensed professional, the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site (adviserinfo.sec.gov) shows whether a firm or person is registered; our guide on checking a financial advisor's background walks through it.

The same habits that help with a human expert help here.

Name the timeframe. "How did my portfolio do this year" and "since I bought" are different questions, and the second one needs a cost basis Walnut does not receive from brokers.

Say what you are deciding. "I am thinking of trimming NVDA to fund a bond ETF, what would that change?" gets a sharper reply than "thoughts on NVDA?".

Tell it once what matters to you. Your horizon and anything you will not own are saved, so they do not need repeating.

Follow up. "Show me the numbers behind that" and "what would change your view?" are both fair questions, and the answers usually show whether the first reply was grounded.

For a broader view of the category, see what an AI financial assistant is, how it compares with a general chatbot for your finances, and the AI financial guidance feature in Walnut.

The quoted warnings come from the joint investor alert Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Investment Fraud (SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, NASAA and FINRA, January 2024). Adviser registration can be checked at the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site. Walnut product details describe the app as of October 2026.