What does Walnut do?

Most people already have an account somewhere: Robinhood, Fidelity, Schwab, Public, Vanguard. What they lack is a second pair of eyes on it. Walnut connects to those accounts, pulls in the positions, and puts an AI assistant on top that can see what you actually own. From there it does four jobs: it helps you understand the portfolio, answers questions about it, turns an idea into a basket of stocks you can buy, and tells you when something changes while you are not looking.

Walnut is a layer on top of your broker, never a replacement for it. Your money, your shares and your login stay where they are. Walnut does not take custody of anything, and it charges no fee on assets.

The first step is linking a brokerage account, which takes about a minute. You sign in on the broker's own connection screen, and your login stays with the broker. Walnut works with 33 brokers across the US, Canada, the UK, Europe, Australia and India, including Robinhood, Public, Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard, E*Trade, Interactive Brokers, Webull and Wealthsimple, among others. The brokers page lists each one and what Walnut can do there.

You can link more than one, and Walnut puts them in a single view, so a Roth IRA at one broker and a taxable account at another read as one portfolio. Holdings sync several times each weekday during market hours.

Some accounts cannot connect at all, a workplace 401(k) or a pension being the common cases. You can tell the assistant about those as outside accounts, with a stated balance. They count toward your goal progress and sit in their own panel beside your broker total, though they do not get a per-holding read.

Once an account is connected, Walnut checks each stock and fund against the S&P 500 over the last year. A holding more than 3 percentage points ahead of the index counts as outperforming, more than 3 behind counts as lagging, and anything between is in line. It also looks at momentum over 1, 3 and 6 months, where the price sits in its 1-year range, and how much of the portfolio the holding takes up. Any single position above 25% of the portfolio is flagged.

From those inputs every holding gets a read with a one-line reason. In line with the index or ahead, with no red flag, reads as keep. Too large a share of the portfolio, or losing momentum, reads as trim. Far behind for a long stretch with weak momentum reads as exit. The read describes what the numbers show; whether to act on it is your call.

One limit worth knowing: most brokers do not share what you paid for a holding, so the read uses each position's price return over the last year rather than your personal gain or loss. Robinhood passes your average cost, so your gain shows for those positions. More on how the read works is in how to analyze your portfolio with AI.

The assistant is a chat that can see your connected holdings, your baskets and your goals. You can ask it which holding is dragging returns, how concentrated you are in one sector, whether two funds overlap, or what the news is on a company you own. It runs web searches for current events, reads photos you upload on the web (a screenshot of a statement, for example), and remembers what you tell it about yourself, such as your goals and how much risk you are comfortable with, so you do not repeat it every conversation.

It can also make changes inside Walnut when you ask: create a basket, adjust a goal, set an alert. The difference from a general chatbot is the data. A general assistant has no view of your account; this one starts from what you actually hold. The AI financial guidance page covers the details.

A basket is a group of stocks or funds with a stated thesis and a target weight for each one. You might build one around a theme you believe in, such as data centers or healthcare, or around a simple allocation you want to keep. You can write it yourself, ask the assistant to draft one, or start from a ready-made playbook on the Ideas shelf.

Walnut tracks each basket against the S&P 500 so you can see whether the idea is working, and it keeps the basket's record separate from the rest of your account. A basket only counts what you bought into it through Walnut, and only once the broker reports the order filled, so a pending after-hours order does not show up as money invested.

Walnut also suggests ideas on its own. On the Home screen, Moves cards point out things it saw in your holdings: a basket idea built around what you already own, a basket that has drifted off its targets, a portfolio spread across only a few names, or a basket you built but never funded. Approving a basket idea creates a draft basket. Buying it is a separate step you confirm.

Prices move, and a basket that started at 25% in one stock can drift to 32% a few months later. Walnut shows each holding's target next to where it sits now, in percentage points, and drafts the buys and sells that would bring it back. A gap under $1 reads as hold, and share counts go to four decimal places so fractional orders work.

Rebalancing works per basket, because holdings outside a basket have no target to measure against. You copy the list and place the trades at your broker; Walnut never sells for you. You can also ask to be alerted when a basket moves past a line you set. How to rebalance your portfolio explains the method in full.

When you want to buy a basket, you pick an amount and Walnut shows the plan share by share: which stock, how many shares, at roughly what price. Nothing is placed until you confirm. In the Invest dialog you tick a box acknowledging these are real orders; in the assistant, each preview carries a signed confirmation tied to you, that basket and that amount. Either way, a repeated request never buys twice. Prices are re-fetched at order time, and the orders go out as market orders.

The brokers that take orders you approve through Walnut:

• Public. Public's own fractional shares disclosure says it will not accept a fractional order under $5.00 outside one of its Investment Plans, so each leg of a basket needs at least $5. A basket whose smallest weight is 10% therefore needs about $50.
• Robinhood, in a separate Robinhood Agentic account you open there. Robinhood's agentic trading overview says an agent "can only place trades in your Robinhood Agentic account" while keeping read access to your other Robinhood accounts, so your main account stays view-only. Robinhood's fractional shares help page sets a $1 minimum per dollar-based order, and each leg also passes Robinhood's own pre-trade review.
• Eight more: E*Trade, tastytrade, Webull (US and Canada), moomoo, Questrade, Wealthsimple, Trading 212 and Stake (Australia).

Every other broker, including Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard and Interactive Brokers, is read in full: holdings, the keep, trim or exit read and the assistant all work. There you copy the plan as text and place it yourself. Walnut places buys only; it does not sell. Every order and the status your broker reports sits on the Orders page.

A basket can carry a standing plan: a fixed amount, weekly, every two weeks or monthly on a day you pick. Plans run from $5 to $100,000 a period. On the scheduled day Walnut checks the account's cash, and if the money is there, places the same orders the Invest button would.

Walnut does not move money from your bank. A recurring investment spends cash that is already in the brokerage account, put there by you or by your broker's own automatic transfer. It uses cash, never margin buying power. If the cash is short, Walnut retries each weekday for up to five days and tells you; if the money never arrives, that period is marked missed rather than doubled up later. A period is never invested twice. The recurring investments page has the setup details, and what is dollar-cost averaging? covers the idea behind it.

Watches and alerts. Ask in your own words to be told when a stock crosses a price, moves sharply in a day (anywhere from 1% to 50%), has an earnings date coming, or when a basket moves off target. You can also ask for a daily or weekly recap of value, return against the S&P 500, top movers and upcoming earnings. Walnut checks hourly on delayed prices and tells you by notification, email and phone push. Up to 25 alerts can be active. Because prices are delayed, an alert is a heads-up, not a substitute for a stop or limit order at your broker.

Daily Update. One email after the US market close carrying only what you have not already read in the app: follow-ups, baskets past your line, Moves and reminders, in that order. On a quiet day there is no email. You can turn it off in Settings or from any email.

Goals. Set a target such as retirement, a house, a car or education, with a date and a monthly amount, and Walnut projects your portfolio to that date at an assumed 7% a year, showing whether you land on track or behind. The 7% is one fixed long-run figure shown beside every projection; it illustrates the arithmetic and is not a market forecast. With under five years to go, your largest holdings are flagged as the main risk. See how to set investment goals with AI.

If you already use Claude or ChatGPT, Walnut can bring your portfolio to them. You add one connector URL, sign in with Walnut, and the assistant you already use can read the holdings across every broker you have linked, plus your baskets, goals and alert settings too. There is no API key to manage, and the assistant never sees your broker password; it sees only what Walnut sees.

The connector is read-focused. None of its tools places an order or moves money; orders happen only inside Walnut's own assistant, after you approve them. Questions you ask there run on your own Claude or ChatGPT plan. Setup steps are in how to connect Walnut to Claude and on the connector page.

Knowing the edges matters as much as the features. Walnut does not:

• Move money from your bank. There is no funding feature. Cash gets into your brokerage account through you or your broker.
• Hold your money or shares. Everything stays at your broker, under your name.
• Trade without your approval. Every one-time buy needs a confirmation, and a recurring plan is one you set up and can stop.
• Sell for you. Walnut drafts sells in a rebalance and gives exit reads, but every sale is placed by you at your broker.
• Manage your account on your behalf. Walnut has no discretionary control over your account. A robo-advisor picks your mix and trades it for a yearly fee; Walnut works from targets you choose and leaves the decisions with you.
• Know your purchase price at most brokers. Without cost basis, the read uses price return rather than your personal gain, Robinhood being the exception.
• Do tax filing or estate planning. It can explain a rule, but it does not prepare returns or legal documents.
• Open a brokerage account for you. It needs an account you already have. If you do not have one yet, Public and Robinhood are two places where Walnut can then place the buys you approve.

For a fuller list of where it is the wrong tool, see the first-party Walnut review, and for how your data is handled, is Walnut safe?

The portfolio read, baskets, rebalancing plans, goals, alerts, the Daily Update and the assistant are free to use. The assistant has a session limit. Walnut Unlimited, $9.99 a month on the web, lifts that limit and changes nothing else. There is no fee on assets and no charge per trade from Walnut; your broker may charge its own fees.

Robinhood's rules on Agentic accounts and agent responsibility come from its agentic trading overview, and its $1 minimum from its fractional shares help page, both checked October 2026. Public's $5.00 minimum comes from the Public Investing fractional shares trading disclosure. Connector setup for Claude is documented in Anthropic's custom connectors guide. Walnut features are described as they work in the product in October 2026. This guide is educational and not personalized financial advice.