What Happens When You Disconnect Acubic?

Key takeaways

• Disconnecting Acubic does not sell, close or move any position. Your holdings stay at your broker exactly as they were.
• What stops is Acubic's access: no further rebalances are prepared, no further orders are sent, and live tracking for that account ends.
• You can end the connection from inside Acubic or at the broker itself: revoke the app in eToro, or delete the API key in Trading 212.
• If you only want Acubic to stop placing orders for a while, pausing or switching the strategy to Manual is gentler than disconnecting.

The fear that disconnecting an automated investment tool will trigger a mass liquidation is the single most common objection to connecting one in the first place. Before granting software access to a live brokerage account, most people want to know: what happens if I change my mind? Will it sell everything? Will the exit cost me money?

The short answer is no. Disconnecting Acubic does not liquidate your portfolio, does not close your positions, and does not trigger any trades. Every holding stays exactly where it is. The only thing that stops is Acubic sending rebalance orders. The exit is free.

That answer appears in one sentence across both broker connection guides. This article gives it a standalone page, because the question deserves more than a sentence buried in a setup walkthrough, and because the detail behind "positions stay where they are" is worth understanding before you decide whether to connect at all.

What the connection actually is, and is not

A connection between Acubic and a brokerage account is not a custody arrangement. Acubic does not hold your money, does not manage it in a discretionary sense, and does not keep anything in transit. The connection is a communication channel: Acubic reads your live positions, constructs a rebalance, and proposes or submits orders through the broker's API on your behalf.

Your positions exist at your broker, not in Acubic. When Acubic places a buy order on your behalf, the resulting position is recorded in your brokerage account and belongs to you there. Ending the communication channel ends Acubic's ability to read and act on that account, but it has no effect on what the broker holds for you. The connection is not a container; it is access.

What happens to your positions

Nothing changes. Positions stay where they are.

If Acubic built a portfolio for you and placed it across a set of holdings in your eToro or Trading 212 account, those positions remain on the books at your broker after you disconnect. They were placed through the broker's API and are recorded in your account like any other trade made through the platform. Disconnecting does not trigger a sell order, does not close any open position, and does not return the account to its pre-connection state.

This is true whichever of the automation modes you use (One-Click Approval, Full Automatic or Manual): disconnecting leaves positions untouched. The mode you were using does not change what happens on the way out.

What stops happening

Scheduled rebalances stop. Acubic will not prepare any further rebalance for that connection and will not submit any further orders to the broker. Whatever drift management, frequency settings, or automation mode you had configured is suspended the moment the connection ends.

If you were on one-click approval mode and had a rebalance pending your review at the moment you disconnected, it will not be submitted. Acubic cannot act on a connection it no longer holds.

Position tracking and drift monitoring also stop for that connected account. Acubic reads positions through the live connection, so once the connection is revoked, the dashboard no longer reflects live data for that broker account.

The two ways to end the connection

There are two paths, and both reach the same outcome: Acubic loses access, your positions stay where they are.

The first is to disconnect from inside Acubic. This removes that portfolio's connection and immediately stops any further rebalance from being prepared or submitted for it. For eToro, the stored authorization is per account: Acubic revokes it once no other Acubic portfolio uses that eToro account.

The second is to revoke the credential directly at the broker. For an eToro connection, you navigate to the eToro App Store in your account settings and remove Acubic's access, which revokes the OAuth token at the source. If you connected with an eToro API key instead, delete that key in eToro under Settings, then Trading. For a Trading 212 connection, you open Trading 212, go to Settings, then API, and delete the key you created for Acubic. The moment the key is deleted, Acubic's access ends, regardless of anything you do in Acubic. The broker-side revocation path exists independently of Acubic, which is by design: the ultimate off switch is yours, not ours.

eToro's own risk disclosure for its App Store puts the same responsibility on the account holder: you are responsible for understanding the access you grant "and for revoking that access when you no longer need it" (eToro App Store Risk Disclosure). Knowing both exits before you connect is part of meeting that responsibility.

How it works for eToro

An eToro connection runs on OAuth. When you connected, you authenticated on eToro's own login page and eToro issued a scoped access token to Acubic. Your eToro password was never shared with Acubic.

OAuth is an open standard for granting an application limited access to an account without handing over the password. Its token revocation specification describes exactly what revoking does: "A revocation request will invalidate the actual token and, if applicable, other tokens based on the same authorization grant" (IETF RFC 7009, OAuth 2.0 Token Revocation). In plain terms, the key Acubic held simply stops opening the door. Nothing about the account behind the door changes.

Revoking the token ends Acubic's access immediately. Your eToro account balance, your open positions, and your cash remain unaffected. For the full picture of what an eToro connection can read, what it can do, and what it can never do, the eToro connection guide covers each question in order. The relevant sentence there reads: disconnecting does not liquidate, and every existing position stays exactly where it is.

How it works for Trading 212

A Trading 212 connection runs on an API key you generated in the Trading 212 app. Trading 212's API documentation states that "you must generate your API keys from within the Trading 212 app", and that the API "is enabled and usable only for Invest and Stocks ISA account types" (Trading 212 Public API documentation). An API key is a long secret string that identifies a program to the broker in place of your login. Unlike an OAuth session, the key persists until you delete it. Deleting it from within Trading 212 ends Acubic's access immediately from the broker's side.

Your positions in your Trading 212 Invest or Stocks ISA account remain exactly where they are. The Trading 212 connection guide covers the automation modes, the permission scope, and the account types supported. One detail worth noting here: Trading 212 supports all three automation modes including full-auto on a main Invest account. If you had full-auto enabled, the next scheduled run simply does not happen once the connection is gone; any run in progress uses safety guards that prevent partial execution from leaving the portfolio in an inconsistent state.

Disconnecting versus changing your strategy

Disconnecting and changing your strategy are different actions with different effects, and it is worth knowing which one you actually want.

Changing the strategy attached to a connection replaces the target portfolio that Acubic aims toward. It does not disconnect the broker or stop rebalancing: the next scheduled run will prepare orders that close the gap between your live positions and the new target. Positions no longer part of the new target will appear as sells on that rebalance, which you approve or which run automatically depending on your mode.

Disconnecting ends the connection entirely. No further rebalances run, no orders are submitted, and positions stay wherever they were when you disconnected. If you want to stop automated orders without removing the connection, switching the strategy to Manual achieves that: in Manual, Acubic sends no orders and you place trades yourself. The mode can only be changed after you deactivate the live strategy.

When to disconnect

There are legitimate reasons to disconnect that have nothing to do with dissatisfaction with the product.

You might want to manage the portfolio manually for a period, perhaps around a significant financial change or a life event where you want to work through the decision yourself before any automated rebalance fires on schedule. Disconnecting gives you that space without closing any position or triggering any cost.

You might be closing or moving the brokerage account. Disconnecting Acubic first is good practice in that case: it removes a credential that is about to become invalid and keeps things tidy for a future reconnection if you open a new account.

You might want to reconnect with a different broker or a rebuilt strategy. Disconnecting first, then building a fresh strategy and reconnecting, is a clean path that avoids a scheduled rebalance firing mid-transition.

In all of these cases the answer to "what happens to my portfolio" is the same: it stays where it is, under your own control, until you decide what to do next.

Deciding whether to connect in the first place

If you are still working through the objections before connecting, the question this article answers is usually the last one. The answer being straightforward is deliberate: the standard for any tool that touches a live brokerage account is that the exit should be as friction-free as the entry. Two other pages help with that decision: the methodology page shows how the method is documented, including its stated limitations, and if what you really want is a break rather than an exit, the guide to pausing without disconnecting covers the gentler option.

How Acubic works covers the full process from strategy building to broker connection. The eToro integration page and the Trading 212 integration page each cover what you are granting access to, what Acubic can do with it, and how to revoke it from the broker side. If you want to understand the automation mode options before connecting, the one-click versus full-auto rebalancing article covers all three modes and when each one fits.

Sources

1. eToro App Store Risk Disclosure, eToro Group Trading Ltd, accessed 12 October 2026.
2. RFC 7009: OAuth 2.0 Token Revocation, Internet Engineering Task Force, August 2013, accessed 12 October 2026.
3. Trading 212 Public API documentation, Trading 212, accessed 12 October 2026.