You normally don't start Z8 or Z9 in Trade mode. Only when you want to connect to a broker that does not support portfolio rebalancing. In that case you must adapt the asset list to the symbols of your broker, and must subscribe market data for all assets. Otherwise you'll get 'ambiguous' or 'invalid symbol' errors.

If your broker supports rebalancing: First download the latest historical data from AssetsZ9, then run a backtest. It wil generate the rebalance CSV file. In your broker's platform, open the portfolio rebalance window and import that CSV file.

Yes, but this workflow worked correctly in previous Zorro versions.

As I understand it, Z9 first downloaded the required historical data from Stooq. After that, when I pressed the `Trade` button in the Zorro GUI, Z9 connected to TWS/IBKR and rebalanced my portfolio directly.

I used this workflow successfully for several years without a US equity market-data subscription.

The reason I cannot simply subscribe now is that IBKR does not offer this live data feed for my account because of my passport/residency jurisdiction.

So my question is: has the intended Z9 workflow changed in recent versions, or was the previous Trade-mode behavior relying on delayed or locally downloaded prices in a way that is no longer supported?

Yes, the free historical data does no longer exist. To get the old workflow, you need to subscribe data from a vendor, and enter that source in the symbol in your z9 asset list.