Link a Brokerage Account

Last updated July 17, 2026

tradeSteward trades and tracks through a secure link to your brokerage account. Linking takes about two minutes, happens entirely on your broker's own login page, and you can undo it at any time.

What linking does

A brokerage link is an authorization, granted by your broker, that lets tradeSteward place and manage trades in your account, capture your fills into the Trade Log, and record balances for performance tracking. Three things are worth knowing before you start:

  • You log in on your broker's own site, in a popup window. Your broker credentials are never typed into tradeSteward and are never stored by tradeSteward.
  • Nothing trades until you say so. Linking an account only makes it available; a bot trades it only after you enable both the account and the bot.
  • The link is revocable. You can unlink a broker on this page whenever you want, and most brokers also let you revoke the authorization from their own site.

Supported brokers

You can link accounts at four brokers: Charles Schwab, tastytrade, Tradier, and TradeStation. You can link more than one broker to the same tradeSteward account, and each broker can bring multiple accounts with it. Every broker has its own short guide with anything specific to that broker:

  1. Open the account menu (the user icon) in the navigation bar and choose Manage Linked Brokers, or go straight to the Manage Linked Brokers page.
  2. Click Add/Update Brokerage Link. The Link New Brokerage to Your Account window opens with a logo for each broker.
  3. Click your broker's logo. A popup window opens on your broker's official site. If nothing appears, check your browser's popup blocker and allow popups for tradeSteward.
  4. Log in at your broker and approve the connection. When the popup closes, tradeSteward refreshes your brokerage links automatically and every account found at that broker appears in the Manage Linked Accounts table.
The Link New Brokerage window showing logo tiles for Schwab, Tradier, tastytrade, and TradeStation
The Link New Brokerage window: click your broker's logo to open its official login popup.
  Why the popup matters: because the link is an authorization rather than a stored password, changing your broker password later never breaks anything you have to fix in tradeSteward, and you can revoke the authorization from your broker's own security settings at any time.

tradeSteward links one username per broker at a time. If you authorize with a different username than the one currently linked, the accounts from the old username are marked closed and replaced by the accounts from the new one, so always connect with the login that owns the accounts you want to trade.

Enable and name your accounts

Linking finds your accounts; enabling puts them to work. Turn on the Enabled switch for each account you want tradeSteward to use. Enabled accounts are available to bots and get balance and trade tracking. If you hit your plan's account limit, a Maximum Accounts Enabled notice asks you to disable another account first or upgrade your subscription.

While you are there, give each account a friendly Account Name so it is easy to recognize in bot settings and reports, and consider the two per-account protections covered in Account Protection: Buying Power and Leverage Settings.

  Name accounts now, not later. Everywhere else in tradeSteward, from the bot form's Trading Account dropdown to every report filter, accounts appear by these names next to a masked number. "Income Account" beats squinting at x1234 vs x5678 every time.

Turning an account's Enabled switch off later shows a caution first: disabling an account also disables all bots that use it, and if you re-enable the account you will need to re-enable those bots too. Open automated trades on the account stop being monitored and are marked closed in tradeSteward, while the positions themselves remain live at your broker. If you want your bots to finish managing open trades, close them before disabling the account. Disabling also stops new trading and minute-by-minute balance, trade, and commission recording.

Import your trade history

On higher subscription tiers, each broker row offers an Import Trades button. It pulls your past fills from the broker into your Trade Log for all enabled accounts at that broker, going back as far as the broker's records allow: about a year for most brokers, and the last 90 days for TradeStation, which is the maximum its records provide. tradeSteward emails you when the import is complete. This is the fastest way to arrive with your history intact instead of starting your reports from zero.

The Import Historical Trades confirmation showing the one-year lookback for enabled Schwab accounts with a Start Import button
Import Trades confirms the lookback for that broker, then emails you when your history has landed.

Reading the two tables

The top table shows one row per broker: its link Status, Total Accounts, Accounts Enabled, when Authentication was last Updated, and action buttons to Update or Unlink.

The bottom table shows one row per account: the Enabled switch, broker, a masked Account Number (hover to see the full number), your Account Name, the two protection dropdowns, current Balance, Link Status, Acct Status, Tracked Trades, and Date Added. Link Status tells you whether the authorization is healthy; Acct Status tells you whether the account itself can trade. Both are decoded state by state in Fix a Disconnected Broker.

The Manage Linked Accounts table showing two accounts with enabled switches, protection dropdowns, balances, and status icons
One row per account: the Enabled switch, protections, balance, and the Link Status and Acct Status icons.

Use Refresh Brokerage Accounts after you make changes at your broker, for example opening a new account or signing an agreement. Refreshes are limited to once every five minutes.

Unlink opens a confirmation that spells out exactly what you are giving up: it deletes the authentication credentials, so no further data flows in either direction, including automated trades, trade logging, and balance updates. Any trades scheduled to open will fail, and the system immediately stops monitoring open automated trades for profit targets, timed exits, and stop losses, so unlink with flat positions or be ready to manage them at your broker. You can relink at any time, but data missed while unlinked is not recoverable.

The Disable Brokerage Link confirmation warning that monitoring of automated trades stops immediately, with Nevermind and Terminate Brokerage Link buttons
Unlinking spells out its consequences before you confirm: monitoring of open automated trades stops immediately.

To permanently remove a single account and its history, first disable it, then click the trash can icon next to the Enabled switch. The Delete Account confirmation lists the consequences and requires typing a confirmation phrase: the account is removed from tradeSteward, freed for use by a different tradeSteward login, bots configured for it are disabled, and all trade, performance, and balance history for the account is deleted. This is irreversible.

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