How to get started
Once you’ve created your account, you’re less than 90 seconds away from unlocking the power of live trading! There are 3 steps you must complete:
Brokerage Application
To support various regulatory requirements, certain data is required by both Composer and Alpaca. This includes ID verification, such as full name, date of birth, and address, as well as tax information, such as social security number and investible assets.
No sensitive information is stored in our system, hence why you must go through the brokerage application in one sequence. If you refresh the page, all information that had been entered is lost. We submit your information to our partner, Alpaca, a registered broker-dealer with FINRA and a member of SIPC, who approves your brokerage application within minutes.
There will be times when we need more information, such as a government ID upload or a tax document upload to verify your identify and process your application. In these cases, you’ll receive an email from us re-directing you to the app for upload. If you have any questions on your brokerage application, don’t hesitate to reach out to support@composer.trade.
Funding Requests
Once your brokerage application has been approved, you’ll receive a confirmation email from us, and you can get started on funding your account. We use a Plaid integration, and you’ll have the option to connect to your bank or manually deposit via routing/account number.
Funding requests typically take less than 24 hours to be approved. If for some reason the transaction is blocked or canceled, you’ll receive an email from us detailing what happened. Once the account is funded, you can invest in a symphony right away.
It typically takes about 6 days from the time of deposit for the funds to be eligible for withdrawal. This is to ensure all transactions have fully processed and limit fraudulent activity. To withdraw funds, go to the user menu in the top right corner of the app and select “Account”.
Through Alpaca, Electronic Transaction Clearing (ETC) acts as the clearing firm and custodian of your funds. More information can be found here.
Investing
Once you’ve completed your brokerage application and deposited money into your account, you’re ready to start trading! Composer will recommend certain symphonies according to your investor profile, but you can also invest in any pre-made symphony on the Discover page, get creative and build your own, or draw inspiration from a friend and use one of their symphonies if they’ve shared a link with you. You can also edit copies of pre-made symphonies to tailor towards your preferences–simply go to a symphony’s factsheet and select “edit a copy” in the top right corner.
Once you’ve invested in a symphony, we invest in the next trading period (3pm ET). We’ll then automatically execute trades based off of the designated calendar frequency or designated threshold. You can manage your investments on the Portfolio page.
If you have any other questions, please reach out to support@composer.trade.