Terms of Use & Disclaimer

Last updated: August 11, 2026  ·  Applies to: Compounder HQ (iOS) v1.0+

1. Scope

These Terms of Use and Disclaimer apply to all users of Compounder HQ, published on the Apple App Store by MARS Studio. By downloading and using the app, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agreed to these terms. The app is intended for adults aged 18 or older.

2. Not Financial, Investment, or Tax Advice

Compounder HQ is an informational and analytical tool. All content, data, scores, classifications, projections, and ranks within the app are provided for educational purposes only:

• No content in this app constitutes financial, investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice.
• No content should be relied upon as the sole basis for any investment decision or any tax filing.
• MARS Studio is not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, tax preparer, or financial institution in any jurisdiction.
• You should consult a qualified financial professional and a qualified tax professional before making investment decisions or filing taxes.
• Compounder HQ does not place trades, hold custody of securities, or transmit orders to any brokerage. The app is read-only with respect to your real holdings.

3. Scope of Coverage: US-Listed Securities Only

Compounder HQ is designed for tracking US-listed securities only: NYSE, NASDAQ, US-listed ETFs, and US ADRs. The app's tax-classification engines, distribution-class manifests, Compounder Score, and after-tax projections are calibrated for US-listed instruments. The app is not intended for tracking non-US-listed equities, mutual funds traded outside the US, or non-US ETFs. Adding such instruments may produce incorrect classifications, projections, or scores.

4. Section 19(a)-1 Distribution Classifications

Compounder HQ classifies distributions from the covered call and option income ETFs identified in the app's tax character manifest into qualified, ordinary, return-of-capital, and Section 1256 components, drawing on each fund's Section 19(a)-1 notices, finalized year-end tax character where published, and splits typical of a fund's option strategy class. That manifest is updated periodically and may not include every fund you hold. The current list is published at marsstudio.app/compounderhq/supported-funds. You acknowledge that:

• Section 19(a)-1 notices are preliminary mid-year estimates issued by the fund. Final tax classifications are determined at year-end on Form 1099-DIV (Boxes 1a, 1b, 2a, 3, etc.) and on the broker-issued consolidated tax statement.
• The curated manifest reflects typical splits observed in prior tax years and may not match the actual final breakdown for any given year.
• Return-of-capital adjustments to your cost basis are computed prospectively from the dividend pipeline and are not a substitute for the cost-basis adjustments shown on your year-end 1099-B.
• Funds may revise distribution classifications during or after the tax year. The app's manifest is updated periodically but may lag actual notices.
• Always reconcile against your broker's year-end statement before filing taxes.

5. Multi-Residency Tax Engine

Compounder HQ supports nine residency settings (United States, Japan, United Kingdom, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Korea, and Other) with treaty-based withholding rates and residency-aware after-tax projection. You acknowledge that:

• Treaty withholding rates baked into the engine reflect the United States' bilateral tax treaty with each listed country and may not reflect rate changes, treaty amendments, or special-status exemptions applicable to your specific situation.
• The engine applies a simplified Foreign Tax Credit (FTC) calculation: net total tax = max(US withholding, domestic gross tax). Real-world FTC limitation, carryforward, and per-basket sourcing rules (e.g. IRS Form 1116, UK Foreign Notes, India DTAA Article 25) may differ.
• Tax-advantaged wrappers (NISA, iDeCo, ISA, SIPP, SRS, MPF, IRP, NPS, PPF, etc.) shelter domestic tax only. US withholding still applies on US dividends inside these wrappers and is generally unrecoverable. The app reflects this; many users do not learn this until they see their broker statement.
• Capital-gain tax rules, surtaxes, threshold-based bracketing, NIIT (US), additional rate taxpayer status (UK), surcharge (India), and comprehensive financial income (Korea) are not modelled in the current version.
• The residency engine is informational. Always consult a qualified tax adviser in your country of residence before making decisions or filing.

6. Specific-Lot Tax Accounting (TaxLot)

Compounder HQ creates a TaxLot for every Buy transaction and consumes lots on Sell using your chosen allocation method (FIFO, LIFO, min-tax, max-tax, or average cost):

• Lot data is computed from your manually-entered cost basis or imported CSV cost basis. The app cannot verify these against your brokerage records.
• Realised gain/loss figures, holding-period classifications (long-term vs short-term), and after-tax proceeds shown in the Sell preview are estimates that depend on the accuracy of your input data.
• Wash-sale disallowed losses (US IRC §1091) are not automatically detected or adjusted in the current version.
• Specific-identification elections at the broker level may differ from the in-app method, reconcile before filing.

7. Compounder Score, Compounder Rank, Dividend Safety Score & Lenses

The Compounder Score (0-10), Compounder Rank (0-100), Dividend Safety Score (0-10), and the Income, Growth, and Value lenses and the Quality gate are heuristic algorithms based on publicly available financial data:

• These scores, lenses, and gates are informational analytical opinions, not investment advice or recommendations, and are not predictions of future performance, dividend continuation, or risk.
• The Income, Growth, and Value lenses and the Quality gate (a returns-on-capital and leverage screen) are alternative analytical views of the same public data; a high or low lens score or quality tier does not constitute a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell.
• Score components include the Chowder Rule (David Crosetti), Lowell Miller's quality filters, and Aristocrat / Champion streak data. These frameworks are vendor-defined and have no formal academic peer-review basis.
• A high Compounder Rank does not constitute a buy recommendation; a low rank does not constitute a sell recommendation.

8. Fair Value, Margin of Safety, F-Score, Z-Score & Signal Zones: Model Limitations

The Fair Value estimate is produced by a two-stage discounted-cash-flow model with bear, base, and bull scenarios; where free-cash-flow data is unavailable or distorted, the app falls back to an earnings-multiple approximation with a wider range. The Fundamental Health screens are adaptations of published academic frameworks, a modified Piotroski F-Score and an Altman Z-Score variant, computed from SEC-filed financial statements. Signal Zones (BETA) combine the app’s existing scores and signals into a per-stock zone state with a confidence level and rationale. You acknowledge that:

• All of these outputs come from simplified, assumption-driven models that may be wrong. Valuation models depend on assumptions about future growth, margins, and discount rates, all uncertain. Computed fair values and the derived Margin of Safety are estimates, not predictions or price targets; actual market prices may differ materially and indefinitely from model outputs.
• Bear/bull scenario ranges indicate a plausible range of model values, not bounds on actual outcomes.
• F-Score and Z-Score are screens over historical financial statements; they do not predict future earnings, solvency, or bankruptcy.
• A Signal Zone is an informational state computed from public data and the app’s own heuristics; it may be wrong, may change without notice, and is not a prediction of price movement.
• None of these outputs, including the Compounder Score, Compounder Rank, and lenses described in Section 7, is a recommendation or solicitation to buy, hold, or sell any security, and none constitutes investment advice.

9. Guru Owners & 13F Institutional Ownership

The Guru Owners feature and Guru Consensus screen show which of a curated list of well-known institutional investors (for example Warren Buffett / Berkshire Hathaway, Bill Ackman, Donald Yacktman, Thomas Gayner, Tom Russo, and others) report holding a given security. You acknowledge that:

• This data is derived solely from public Form 13F filings submitted to the SEC and from public CUSIP-to-ticker mappings; it is informational only and is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell any security.
• Form 13F filings are reported quarterly and may be filed up to approximately 45 days after the end of the calendar quarter, so the holdings shown may be significantly delayed and may no longer reflect an investor's current positions. 13F filings also exclude short positions, certain non-US holdings, and cash.
• The named investors, funds, and management firms have no affiliation with, involvement in, or endorsement of Compounder HQ or MARS Studio. Their names are used only to identify the source of publicly filed ownership data. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.
• The presence or absence of a given investor for any security reflects the contents and timing of public filings and any limitations of the CUSIP-to-ticker mapping, and should not be relied upon as complete or current.

10. Dividend Reinvestment

Compounder HQ does not simulate dividend reinvestment and does not create reinvestment purchases. Reinvestment is carried out by your brokerage, and this app does not communicate with your brokerage. The income goal and FIRE date projection do carry a reinvestment assumption, which is shown to you as a setting you control and which you can switch off; it describes what your broker does with your distributions, and the app performs no reinvestment of its own. You acknowledge that:

• Reinvestment purchases created by earlier versions of the app are retained as ordinary purchases. Their cost basis, holding period, and wash-sale and return-of-capital treatment are unchanged, and they remain subject to the limitations described in Section 6.
• Reinvestment enrolment must be set up at your brokerage. Purchases your broker makes on your behalf appear in the app only if you record or import them.

11. After-Tax Income Forecast & FIRE Date

The After-Tax Income Forecast and FIRE Date / Income Goal projections are forward-looking estimates:

• They assume continuation of historical dividend payments at the rate set in your inputs and the user-supplied dividend growth rate.
• Companies may reduce, suspend, or eliminate dividends at any time. Past dividend history does not guarantee future payments.
• Yield-on-cost figures reflect historical purchase prices and current dividend rates; they do not predict future income.
• Market conditions, regulatory changes, currency-exchange shifts, and company-specific factors can materially impact actual outcomes.
• Projections beyond a few years carry significant uncertainty. The 60-year horizon in the FIRE date model is for illustration of compounding mechanics, not a financial forecast.

12. Portfolio X-Ray

The Portfolio X-Ray feature uses a curated top-10 holdings manifest for popular US ETFs to estimate effective exposure to underlying securities. You acknowledge that:

• The manifest reflects holdings at a point in time and may lag actual ETF holdings; ETFs reweight regularly.
• Exposures shown are top-10 approximations; the long tail of an ETF's holdings is not surfaced.
• Future versions may move to live ETF-holdings fetch when our data-tier permits.

13. Third-Party Data

Compounder HQ displays market data sourced from the following third-party services. Some of this data is retrieved by MARS Studio’s caching service (Section 4 of the Privacy Policy) rather than directly by your device. MARS Studio is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of data provided by these services:

• Finnhub: quotes, fundamentals, dividend history, profiles, basic financials, earnings calendar, analyst data.
• Yahoo Finance: price history, fundamentals, market-context and holder data, fetched by the app and by our caching service.
• SEC EDGAR: publicly available regulatory filings, including covered-call ETF distribution notices and the Form 13F institutional-ownership filings that power the Guru Owners feature.
• OpenFIGI (by Bloomberg): maps the CUSIP identifiers in 13F filings to ticker symbols for the Guru Owners feature.

Data outages, rate-limiting, or upstream errors may cause stale prices, missing dividends, or incomplete fundamentals. The app surfaces error states with retry affordances where applicable.

14. Subscriptions

Pro is an auto-renewable subscription, and full use of the app requires either an active free access period or an active Pro subscription. Pro unlocks unlimited accounts and positions, after-tax income forecast with Section 19(a)-1 covered-call ETF tax intelligence, full Compounder Score breakdown, Margin of Safety, Quality-Growth screener, capital allocation grade with buyback yield and owner earnings, Portfolio X-Ray with SPY benchmark, all alerts, and unlimited CSV imports. There is no permanent free tier. New users get a free access period (see below), after which a Pro subscription is required to continue using the app.

Pricing. Pro is billed at $39.99 USD per year for subscribers in the United States. Apple applies its standard regional pricing matrix in other countries; the current local price is shown on the in-app paywall before purchase and on your iOS subscription confirmation screen.

Free access period for new users. New users receive 14 days of full Pro access at no cost, with no payment method required and no charge of any kind during the period. This free access period is managed by the app, not by Apple's subscription system; it does not convert into a paid subscription automatically. A Pro subscription begins only if you explicitly purchase one from the in-app paywall. The free access period is available once per user and its length may be extended by the Referral Program below.

Referral Program. Compounder HQ offers an optional referral program: when a friend joins using your referral code, you and the friend each receive one additional month of access. For users without an active subscription, the month is added to the free access period; for active subscribers, it is delivered as an App Store promotional offer applied through Apple's subscription system. Each person may redeem a referral code once, and earned referral months are capped at 6 months per person per year. Referral rewards have no cash value and are not transferable or redeemable for money. MARS Studio may modify, suspend, or discontinue the referral program, and may withhold rewards obtained through fraud or abuse, at any time.

Auto-renewal. Your Pro subscription will automatically renew at the then-current annual price unless auto-renewal is cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your Apple ID account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours prior to the end of the current period.

Managing or cancelling. You can manage your subscription, view renewal date, or cancel auto-renewal at any time after purchase by going to iOS Settings › [Your Name] › Subscriptions › Compounder HQ. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid period; you keep Pro access until that date and are not refunded for the remainder of the period unless required by Apple's standard refund policy.

Refunds. All payments are processed by Apple. MARS Studio cannot directly issue refunds. Refund requests are subject to Apple's standard refund policy. Please contact Apple Support via reportaproblem.apple.com.

15. Regional Notice

This app is available globally. Local laws and regulations regarding financial information, investment services, and tax-classification tools vary by country. It is your responsibility to ensure that use of this app complies with the laws of your jurisdiction.

16. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, MARS Studio, its founders, developers, and affiliates shall not be liable for any loss or damage, including direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or tax-penalty losses, arising from your use of or reliance on Compounder HQ or any data, score, classification, projection, or analysis it provides.

17. Disclaimer of Warranties

The app and all content, data, scores, classifications, projections, and analyses it provides are supplied “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including, without limitation, warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, completeness, timeliness, non-infringement, and uninterrupted or error-free availability. Market data may be delayed, incomplete, or inaccurate, and the app or its data services may be interrupted, degraded, or discontinued at any time. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so some of the above exclusions may not apply to you; in that case any implied warranty is limited to the minimum scope and duration permitted by applicable law.

18. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless MARS Studio and its founders, developers, and affiliates from any claim, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your breach of these terms or your misuse of the app.

19. Governing Law & Dispute Resolution

These terms are governed by the laws of Japan, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Nothing in this clause deprives you of any mandatory consumer protections of the law of the country in which you reside. Before pursuing any formal claim, you agree to first contact us at chq-privacy@marsstudio.app and allow 30 days for us to attempt to resolve the issue informally.

20. Severability

If any provision of these terms is held invalid or unenforceable, that provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.

21. Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms from time to time. Material changes will be reflected in the "Last updated" date above. Continued use of the app after any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated terms.

22. Contact

Questions about these terms? Contact us at chq-privacy@marsstudio.app or write to us at MARS Studio, marsstudio.app.