What is the Walnut Daily Update?

It is a digest of your own feed. Every notice Walnut raises on its own goes into your notifications feed first, on the web and in the app. Once a day, after the close, Walnut looks at what is still unread and sends it to you in one email with the subject line "Your Daily Update", dated for that day in New York time.

This replaced an older setup in which each follow-up, suggestion and basket alert was its own email. That produced a lot of mail, and whichever notice lost the race for the inbox never reached it. Batching means nothing is dropped and the inbox gets one message instead of several.

Three rules shape it. It goes out once a day at most: Walnut waits at least 20 hours between two Daily Updates. It only carries what you have not read, so something you already opened at lunch stays out of the evening email. And a quiet day stays quiet. There is no "nothing happened today" email, because an empty email is how people learn to ignore the next one.

The Daily Update is part of a free Walnut account. The product page for it is at Daily Update, and the wider picture of what Walnut does is in What does Walnut do?

It is scheduled for the late afternoon in New York, after the regular trading session ends at 4pm Eastern and after Walnut's weekday end-of-day basket check, so the day's basket news can be in it. The send is set for 21:30 UTC, which is 5:30pm Eastern while daylight saving time is in effect and 4:30pm Eastern in winter, since a UTC schedule does not move when the clocks change. Your mail provider can add a few minutes before it shows in your inbox.

It runs every day of the week, but weekends are usually empty because markets are closed and fewer notices are raised. A Saturday email only goes out if something new and unread is waiting.

Only notices Walnut raised on its own, that you have not read, from roughly the last day and a half. Walnut looks back at most 36 hours, and never past the previous Daily Update, so the same item is not sent twice. Items are grouped under four headings, always in this order.

Picking up where you left off. Follow-ups on conversations with the Walnut assistant. If you said you would think about trimming a stock before its earnings and then closed the tab, Walnut can come back to it. Follow-ups are raised on a development, not on silence: a price move since the conversation, an earnings date arriving, or you having asked to be followed up. The one exception is a single gentle check-in on a decision you left open one to three days earlier, which is never repeated. Each follow-up states what changed and asks whether you want to pick the topic back up.

Your baskets. A basket is a group of stocks with target weights that you set. If you gave a basket a drift threshold, and its holdings move further from those targets than that line, Walnut raises an alert. Baskets without a threshold you set do not trigger this, and each basket raises one at most once a week.

Worth a look. Moves, Walnut's short list of observations about your portfolio, such as a heavy weighting in one sector. Only the Moves Walnut rates as high confidence go into the feed and the email. If you have added accounts held elsewhere by hand (a workplace 401(k), for example), concentration Moves stay in the feed only and are left out of the email, because Walnut is working from a partial picture of your money.

From Walnut. Everything else Walnut chose to raise: a goal check-in, a note that your portfolio read is ready, a nudge to connect a broker that can place trades, and similar.

The email shows up to eight items. Each has a title, a line or two of detail, and an "Open in Walnut" link straight to the right page. If there are more than eight, the email ends with a single line, "And N more in Walnut", linking to your full feed. Every Daily Update closes with a short note that Walnut is an informational tool and that nothing is bought or sold unless you approve it.

Two kinds of email skip the evening batch on purpose and arrive straight away.

Alerts you set yourself. If you asked the assistant to tell you when a stock crosses a price, moves sharply in a day, or has earnings coming, that alert emails you the moment it fires. You asked for that exact message, and the moment is the point. How to set these up is covered in How to build a watchlist with AI.

Notices about your money. If you run a recurring investment into a basket and a contribution is skipped because the cash was not in your brokerage account, cannot go in, is written off, or goes in only partly because the broker rejected some of the orders, Walnut emails you about it directly. Those are records of the system acting on your money, and they do not wait for the evening. How do recurring investments work? explains when a contribution is retried and when it is missed.

Usually because there was nothing to send. The checks run in this order, and any one of them can explain a missing email:

• Nothing new and unread. No follow-up, basket alert, Move or reminder was raised in the window, so Walnut sent nothing. This is the most common reason and it means the system is working as designed.
• You already read it. On the web, clicking a notice or pressing "Mark all read" in the feed marks it read. In the app, opening the notifications screen marks what is on it as read. Anything read before the evening run stays out of the email.
• It was too old. Notices older than 36 hours, or older than your last Daily Update, are not resent. They are still in your feed.
• You got one recently. Walnut waits at least 20 hours between two Daily Updates.
• You turned emails off. If you unticked the email setting or clicked Unsubscribe in an earlier email, the Daily Update stops. If Walnut cannot read that setting for any reason, it sends the Daily Update to nobody that day rather than risk emailing someone who opted out.
• Your account has no email address. An account created with a phone number only has nowhere to send it. The notices still reach your feed.
• It went to spam or a promotions tab. The Daily Update comes from noreply@walnutinvest.com. Searching your mail for "Your Daily Update" usually finds it.

A missing Daily Update never means you missed something for good. Every item it would have carried is still in the notifications feed in Walnut.

There are three ways, and all three switch off the same thing.

• In Settings. Open Settings in Walnut, find the Email section, and untick "Email me suggestions, reminders and updates." A confirmation reads "Walnut emails are off." Ticking it again turns them back on.
• From the email. The footer of every Daily Update has an Unsubscribe link, which turns these emails off in one click, and a link to manage your email settings.
• From your mail app. The Daily Update carries the standard one-click unsubscribe headers, so Gmail, Yahoo and other mail apps can show their own Unsubscribe button next to the sender. Google's email sender guidelines require senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts to support one-click unsubscribe on marketing and subscribed messages, and Walnut supports it regardless of volume.

There is no separate switch for the Daily Update alone. Turning it off stops all of Walnut's suggestion and reminder emails, since the Daily Update is where those now arrive.

A few things keep coming after you opt out. Emails about your money, such as a recurring investment that was skipped or went in only partly, are still sent, and their footer says why. Alerts you set yourself still email when they fire; stopping the alert is how you end those. Sign-in and password emails are always sent. Your in-app feed keeps working as before, and phone notifications from the Walnut app are controlled separately in your phone's notification settings.

The US CAN-SPAM Act, as summarized by the Federal Trade Commission, gives senders up to 10 business days to honor an opt-out. Walnut checks your setting each time it is about to send, so the next Daily Update after you opt out is the one that does not arrive.

The one-click unsubscribe requirement for bulk senders is from Google's Email sender guidelines. The opt-out deadline is from the Federal Trade Commission's CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business. Everything about how the Daily Update is built, timed and switched off describes Walnut as it works in October 2026. Walnut is informational and is not a registered investment adviser.