If you've spent any time looking at finance companies online, you've seen two different kinds of services. They sometimes look the same from the outside. They are very different on the inside. And the difference is something every self-directed trader should understand before they hand anyone their information.
One model is called discretionary advice. The other is called decision-support. Here's the difference.
Discretionary advice
A discretionary advisor takes control of your money. You give them your account, or you let them place trades inside your account, and they decide what happens to it. They buy. They sell. They rebalance. You read the statement at the end of the month.
This is how a lot of traditional wealth management works. It's a legitimate model. But it requires very specific licensing, regulatory oversight, and a relationship of trust that some people are comfortable with and others are not.
The biggest thing about discretionary advice is that the person giving the advice can also execute on it. They have authority over your account. You have less direct control over what happens day to day.
Decision-support
A decision-support platform doesn't touch your account. It can't. It's structurally separate from your brokerage.
What it does is give you research and analysis. It surfaces setups. It explains why a particular configuration looks meaningful. It might come with a desk of professionals reviewing its outputs. But every actual decision — whether to enter a position, what size to take, when to exit — stays with you.
The platform is research. You are the trader.
Why this matters in practice
The difference comes down to one thing: who clicks the button.
With discretionary advice, the advisor clicks. With decision-support, you click. That single distinction has enormous implications for everything else — how the company is regulated, what kind of license they need, how they make money, what they can and can't tell you, and how much control you actually retain over your own capital.
The question isn't who has the best ideas. It's who clicks the button.
Where Sentinel sits
Sentinel is a decision-support platform. Strictly. We surface setups. We explain why a setup makes sense. A quantitative desk reviews every one before it's published to a client dashboard.
What we never do:
- Hold, custody, or pool client funds.
- Place trades on a client's behalf.
- Provide personalised investment advice for an individual person's situation.
- Promise specific returns.
What we always do:
- Surface research-grade setups in the U.S. large-cap market.
- Show our reasoning — what the engine saw, why the desk approved it.
- Leave every actual decision in your hands.
- Make sure you hold your own brokerage account in your own name, at all times.
This is deliberate. It's not a workaround. It's the model that keeps you in control of your money — and it's the model that makes Sentinel the kind of company it is, instead of a different kind of company entirely.
If a company can place trades in your account, that's discretionary advice. If a company can only show you research and let you decide what to do, that's decision-support. Both are legitimate. The second one keeps the click — and the control — with you.