Terms of service
Rules Desk ("Rules Desk", "we", "us", "our") is a sole proprietorship operated by Ruben Roman. It runs the website at rulesdesk.com and the software, calculators, written material and any paid products offered through it (together, the "Services"). These Terms of Service are the agreement between you and Rules Desk. By using any part of the Services you accept them. If you do not accept them, do not use the Services.
Please read section 2 and section 12 carefully. They describe what Rules Desk is not, and they are the most important parts of this agreement.
1. What this agreement covers
These Terms apply to the website, the free tools on it, any paid software or downloadable product, and any email we send you about them. Our Privacy Policy covers how we handle your personal information, and our Refund Policy covers purchases. Both form part of this agreement. Where the Privacy Policy and these Terms disagree about personal information, the Privacy Policy controls.
Some parts of the Services carry their own in-product use agreement, which you accept separately before that part will run. Where that agreement is stricter than these Terms, the stricter version applies.
2. What Rules Desk is, and what it is not
Rules Desk is educational software and written material. It helps you write down your own trading rules in advance, check a trade you are about to take against those rules, keep a record of what happened, and see what that record does and does not statistically support.
Rules Desk is not financial, investment, trading, tax or legal advice. We are not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, commodity trading advisor, commodity pool operator or introducing broker, and nothing in the Services is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any instrument.
Specifically, the Services:
- contain no market data and no market opinion, and cannot tell you what to trade, when to trade, or where price is going;
- do not generate signals, alerts, trade ideas or copy-trading instructions;
- do not connect to any broker, exchange, platform or proprietary trading firm, and cannot place, size, modify or close an order;
- do not evaluate whether your rules are good rules. When the software tells you a trade is allowed, that means only that the trade matches the rules you wrote. It is not an endorsement of the trade.
We make no claim about money. We do not promise, project or imply any profit, income, return, funded account, evaluation pass, or improvement in your results, and no statement anywhere in the Services should be read as one. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss, is not suitable for every person, and most people who attempt it lose money. You can lose more than you deposit. Nobody, including us, can tell you which outcome will be yours. Our Risk Disclosure has more detail and forms part of this agreement.
Rules Desk is not therapy, counselling, medical care or crisis support, and it is not a substitute for any of them.
3. Who may use the Services
You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into this agreement. The Services are not intended for children. You are responsible for making sure your use of the Services is lawful where you live and permitted by your broker's and your proprietary trading firm's current rules; we do not monitor or enforce those rules for you.
4. Your account and your data
Some features require an account. Keep your credentials to yourself; you are responsible for activity under your account. Tell us promptly if you believe it has been used without your permission.
Your trading rules, your trade log and anything else you enter remain yours. We do not sell them, and we do not publish them. We use them to operate the Services for you, and we may use aggregated, de-identified information to improve the Services. Our Privacy Policy has the detail.
5. How the software must be used
Parts of the Services will stop working for you, for a fixed period, in defined circumstances. This is deliberate and it is a safety feature, not a malfunction. It happens when what you bring to the software is not something a rules-checker should be answering — for example when the reason for a trade is a need for money, when you tell us you cannot stop trading, when the situation you describe is a life crisis rather than a trading question, or when what you are looking for is a therapist. There is one further condition, described in section 6.
When a stop happens, the software says so plainly, tells you which condition triggered it, and tells you when the affected features return. Your record stays intact and readable throughout. Attempting to defeat a stop — by rewording the same input, by opening a second account, or by any other means — is a breach of these Terms and may end your access permanently.
6. There is no human on the other side
This matters enough to state on its own. Rules Desk is software. No person reads what you type into it, and there is no queue, review desk, on-call staff or monitoring service behind it. Nothing you enter reaches a human being who is in a position to help you, and we do not and cannot watch for signs that you are in trouble.
If you tell the software something that suggests you may be at risk of harming yourself, it will stop, say so, and point you toward real help. That stop is the entire safeguard we are able to offer, which is why it is a hard one. Do not use the Services to seek help in an emergency. If you are in crisis, contact your local emergency number, or in the United States call or text 988 (the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline).
7. Purchases, prices and renewals
Prices are shown in US dollars and may change; a change never affects an order already placed. Payment is processed by Shopify and its payment providers, not by us, and is subject to their terms. You are responsible for any taxes that apply to you.
If you buy access on a recurring basis, we will tell you the price and the billing interval before you pay, and we will charge that amount each interval until you cancel. You can cancel at any time, and cancellation takes effect at the end of the interval you have already paid for. We do not charge a cancellation fee and we do not require you to contact us to cancel.
If you buy a downloadable product, we will tell you on the product page what the files are and how they are delivered before you pay.
8. Refunds
Refunds are governed by our Refund Policy. In short: if something we sold you does not work or does not arrive, tell us and we will fix it or refund you.
9. Our intellectual property
The Services, including the software, text, layout, calculators, worksheets, templates, graphics and the Rules Desk name and marks, belong to us or our licensors and are protected by copyright and trade mark law. When you buy or subscribe, you get a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use what you bought, for your own trading. You may print and use the worksheets and templates for yourself.
You may not resell, sublicense, republish, redistribute, or share your access or our files with anyone else; use them to build a competing product or service; or strip out our notices. You may not copy, scrape, or systematically extract the Services, or use them to train a machine-learning model, without our written permission.
10. Your content
You keep ownership of what you put in. You give us only the permission we need to store it, process it and show it back to you in order to run the Services. You are responsible for what you enter, and you confirm you have the right to enter it.
11. Things you may not do
- Break the law, or use the Services to help anyone else break it.
- Present the Services, or anything produced with them, as financial advice, a signal service, or a promise of results — including to your own audience.
- Impersonate us or suggest we endorse you, your strategy, your firm or your results.
- Interfere with the Services: no unauthorised access, no probing or scanning, no automated bulk requests, no attempt to disrupt or overload the site.
- Use the Services on behalf of someone else, or let anyone else use your account.
- Defeat, evade or misrepresent your way around a stop described in section 5 or section 6.
12. No warranty
The Services are provided "as is" and "as available", with no warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy or non-infringement, to the fullest extent the law allows.
We do not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free, that any calculation, statistic or output will be accurate or free of defects, or that the Services will produce any particular result. Every calculation the Services perform is arithmetic on numbers you supplied, and every output is only as sound as those numbers and as the rules you wrote. Check anything that matters before you act on it. Every order is yours, placed by you, on your own platform, and every trading decision and its consequences are yours alone.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties. Where that is the case, the exclusions above apply only to the extent permitted, and you may have rights that this section does not affect.
13. Limit on our liability
To the fullest extent the law allows, Rules Desk and anyone working with us will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any lost profits, lost trading gains, trading losses, lost data, lost opportunity, failed evaluation, breached account rule or business interruption, arising out of or connected with the Services — whether or not we were told such damages were possible, and whatever the legal theory.
Where we are liable, our total liability for all claims taken together is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) fifty US dollars.
Some jurisdictions do not allow these limits. Where that is the case, they apply only to the extent permitted, and nothing here limits liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.
14. Claims you cause
You agree to indemnify and hold Rules Desk harmless from any claim, loss, liability, or reasonable legal cost arising from your use of the Services, your breach of these Terms, your trading, or your presentation of the Services to anyone else.
15. Ending your access
You can stop using the Services at any time, and cancel any recurring payment as described in section 7. We may suspend or end your access if you breach these Terms, if we are required to by law, or if we discontinue the Services. If we discontinue a paid service, we will refund the unused portion of anything you have already paid for.
Sections 2, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14 and 17 survive the end of this agreement.
16. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms. When we do, we will change the "Last updated" date above and post the new version here. If a change materially reduces your rights, we will give notice by email to the address on your account where we have one. Continuing to use the Services after a change means you accept the updated Terms.
17. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the federal laws of the United States that apply there, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute that is not resolved between us will be brought in the courts sitting in Puerto Rico, and you and we both agree to that venue. Nothing here prevents you from bringing a claim in a small claims court where one is available to you, or from raising a complaint with a consumer protection authority where you live.
If any part of these Terms is held unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it.
18. Contact
Rules Desk is operated by Ruben Roman as a sole proprietorship. Questions about these Terms, or about anything on this site: email support@rulesdesk.com, or use the Contact page. We answer every message, normally within two business days.
Rules Desk provides educational software and written material only. Nothing in the Services is financial, investment or trading advice. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for every investor; most people who attempt it lose money. Nothing we publish promises or implies profit.