Legal, Terms & Disclaimers

1. Investment research disclaimer

Northstar is operated by Plainview Capital Limited ("Northstar", "we", "us"). The service publishes thematic investment research: structured briefings, indicator scores, signals, watchpoints, and commentary on long-horizon investment themes and the companies exposed to them.

1.1 No advice, no client relationship

All content is provided for general informational and educational purposes only. It is impersonal: it does not take into account your objectives, financial situation, tax position, or needs, and it must not be relied upon as the basis for any investment decision. Your use of Northstar does not create an adviser–client, broker–client, or fiduciary relationship of any kind.

We are not a bank, broker-dealer, investment adviser, or portfolio manager, and Plainview Capital Limited is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or any other financial regulator. If you are in doubt about the suitability of any investment, seek advice from a professional adviser who is authorised in your jurisdiction.

1.2 Non-independent material

Content on Northstar is a marketing communication for the Northstar service and has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research, and is not subject to any prohibition on dealing ahead of its dissemination.

1.3 Mentions of companies and instruments

Themes reference specific companies, funds, ETFs, commodities, and other instruments to illustrate how a theme maps to investable markets. A mention, score, "investment angle", inclusion in a value chain or universe map, or appearance in a screener is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell that instrument, and is not a statement that it is suitable for any investor.

1.4 Accuracy, sources, and AI assistance

We aim for accuracy, but content is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranty of any kind. Information may be incomplete, out of date, or wrong; figures are drawn from third-party sources we do not control and have not independently verified. Indicator scores are computed by a deterministic scoring engine from analyst-set inputs; they are analytical opinions, not measurements, facts, or predictions. Portions of the research corpus are produced and maintained with the assistance of AI tools under a gated editorial process; AI-assisted content can contain errors. Always verify any fact you intend to rely on.

1.5 Conflicts of interest

Northstar personnel and contributors may hold positions in instruments or companies mentioned on the service. Any such positions do not influence coverage or scores, which are computed by the deterministic scoring engine from analyst-set inputs. We receive no compensation from any issuer mentioned in the research for coverage or scores.

1.6 Jurisdiction limits

The service is not directed at, and content must not be distributed to or used by, any person in a jurisdiction where such distribution or use would be contrary to local law or would subject us to any registration or licensing requirement. Users are responsible for compliance with the laws that apply to them.

2. Risk warning

• Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. Performance figures shown on Northstar are historical, may be simulated or based on representative baskets, do not include fees, taxes, or trading costs, and would have been different for any real portfolio.
• Forward-looking statements — theses, triggers, scenarios, watchpoints, and score trajectories — are inherently uncertain and may prove wrong. Actual outcomes can differ materially.
• Thematic investing carries concentration risk. Themes can fail, reverse, or take far longer to play out than expected; early-stage, small-capitalisation, frontier-market, private-market, and cryptoasset exposures carry elevated risk of large or total loss and may be illiquid.
• Currency movements may cause the value of overseas investments to rise or fall independently of the underlying asset.
• Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change.

3. Terms of service

These terms are a binding agreement between you and Plainview Capital Limited governing your use of the Northstar website, application, APIs, and any free or paid subscription (together, the "Service"). By accessing the Service, creating an account, or subscribing, you accept these terms, the disclaimers in sections 1–2, and the privacy policy. If you do not accept them, do not use the Service.

3.1 The Service

Northstar provides access to thematic investment research content and related tools (screeners, watchlists, portfolios of themes, discovery feeds, comparisons, and community features). Free accounts receive a limited subset of themes and features; the "Pro" subscription unlocks the full corpus and gated features. We may add, change, or withdraw features, themes, and scores at any time; research is refreshed on our own schedule and we make no commitment to update any particular item.

3.2 Eligibility and accounts

• You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter contracts.
• You are responsible for your account credentials and for all activity under your account. Accounts are personal and non-transferable; one account per person. Notify us at hello@northstar-research.app of any suspected unauthorised use.
• You may not share Pro access, resell content, or use the Service on behalf of a firm's clients without a separate written licence from us.

3.3 Subscriptions, billing, and trials

• Paid plans are billed in advance on a recurring monthly or annual basis via our payment processor, Stripe. Prices are shown at checkout; promotional pricing (including founder pricing) applies as described at checkout and may be capped or withdrawn for new subscribers at any time.
• Automatic renewal: your subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period at the then-current price for your plan unless you cancel before renewal. We will give advance notice of price increases; the new price applies from your next renewal after the notice period.
• Cancellation: you can cancel at any time via the billing portal in your account. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period; you keep access until then. Except as stated in 3.4 or required by law, payments are non-refundable and no credit is given for partial periods.
• Taxes (e.g. VAT/GST/sales tax) may be added where required by law.
• If a payment fails and remains unpaid after retry, we may downgrade or suspend Pro access until payment succeeds.

3.4 Cooling-off period (consumers)

If you are a consumer in the UK, EU, or another jurisdiction with a statutory cooling-off right, you may cancel a new subscription within 14 days of purchase. By purchasing, you request immediate access to digital content and acknowledge that if you exercise the cooling-off right after access has begun, we may deduct an amount proportionate to the service already supplied (or, where the law treats full access to digital content as complete performance to which you have consented, the right may be lost). To exercise this right, email hello@northstar-research.app within 14 days of purchase from your account email.

3.5 Licence and acceptable use

We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access the Service and use its content for your own private, non-commercial purposes. You must not:

• copy, scrape, crawl, bulk-download, republish, redistribute, sell, or provide the content (including scores, signals, and briefings) to any third party, or use it to build a competing product or dataset;
• use the content or any part of the Service to train, fine-tune, or evaluate machine-learning models without our prior written consent;
• circumvent, probe, or defeat access controls, gating, or rate limits, or access non-public endpoints or data bundles;
• use the Service to provide regulated investment services to others;
• interfere with the operation or security of the Service.

Brief quotations with attribution and a link ("Source: Northstar") are permitted for non-commercial commentary.

3.6 Your submissions

Where the Service lets you submit content (theme proposals, debate comments, feedback), you grant us a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free licence to use, reproduce, adapt, publish, and display that content in connection with operating and improving the Service, with or without attribution. You warrant your submissions are lawful, are your own work or properly licensed, contain no confidential or inside information, and are not investment advice to other users. We may moderate, edit, or remove submissions at our discretion. Suggesting a theme does not entitle you to compensation, and any published theme and its scores are our work product.

3.7 No advice; assumption of risk

Sections 1 (disclaimer) and 2 (risk warning) form part of these terms. You agree that you alone are responsible for your investment decisions and their outcomes, and that you will not treat any content on the Service as advice or a recommendation.

3.8 Disclaimer of warranties

The Service and all content are provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, timeliness, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and uninterrupted or error-free operation.

3.9 Limitation of liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded by law (including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud). Subject to that:

• we are not liable for any investment or trading losses, loss of profit, loss of opportunity, or loss of data arising from use of, reliance on, or inability to use the Service or its content;
• we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages;
• our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose and £100.

3.10 Indemnity

You will indemnify us against claims, losses, and costs (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your breach of these terms, your submissions, or your misuse of the Service or its content.

3.11 Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access (with a pro-rata refund of prepaid fees where the termination is not for breach) if you breach these terms, if required by law, or if we discontinue the Service. You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. Sections 1, 2, 3.5–3.12 survive termination.

3.12 General

• Changes: we may update these terms; material changes will be notified by email or in-product notice at least 14 days before they take effect. Continued use after the effective date is acceptance.
• Governing law and venue: these terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales — except that consumers retain any mandatory protections and forum rights of their country of residence.
• Entire agreement; severability; no waiver; assignment — standard provisions apply: these terms are the entire agreement regarding the Service; if a clause is unenforceable, the remainder stands; failure to enforce is not waiver; you may not assign these terms, we may assign them to a successor of the business.
• Contact: Plainview Capital Limited, hello@northstar-research.app.

4. Privacy policy

This policy explains how Plainview Capital Limited (the data controller) handles personal data in connection with Northstar. We collect the minimum needed to run a subscription research service, and we do not sell personal data or run third-party advertising or cross-site tracking.

4.1 What we collect and why

• Account data — email address and hashed password, managed by our authentication provider (Supabase). Purpose: sign-in, account security, service emails. Legal basis: performance of a contract.
• Entitlement and billing data — your plan, subscription status, billing period, and a Stripe customer reference. Card details are collected and stored by Stripe, not by us; we never see your full card number. Purpose: providing paid access, billing, tax, fraud prevention. Legal basis: contract and legal obligation.
• Content you submit — theme proposals, debate comments, feedback, and associated metadata. Purpose: operating community features and improving the research corpus. Legal basis: contract and legitimate interests.
• Preferences and usage state — watchlists, portfolio selections, display preferences. Stored against your account (when signed in) and/or locally in your browser. Legal basis: contract.
• Technical logs — IP address, user-agent, and request logs generated by our hosting and API providers (Vercel, Supabase, Stripe) for security, abuse prevention, and reliability. Legal basis: legitimate interests. Logs are retained for short, provider-standard periods.

4.2 Processors and transfers

We use these processors, each under their own data-processing terms: Supabase (authentication and database), Stripe (payments and billing portal), and Vercel (hosting and serverless APIs). These providers may process data outside your country, including in the United States, under appropriate safeguards (e.g. UK/EU standard contractual clauses or adequacy frameworks).

4.3 Retention

Account and entitlement data are kept while your account exists and for up to 6 years after closure where needed for tax, accounting, and legal claims. Community submissions may persist in anonymised form after account deletion. You can request deletion at any time (see 4.4).

4.4 Your rights

Depending on your location (including under UK GDPR / EU GDPR / CCPA), you may have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, or port your personal data, to object to processing based on legitimate interests, and to withdraw consent. Contact hello@northstar-research.app to exercise any right; we respond within the statutory period. You may also complain to your supervisory authority (in the UK, the ICO at ico.org.uk).

4.5 Children

The Service is not directed at children and may not be used by anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect data from children.

4.6 Changes

We will post any changes to this policy here and update the date at the top; material changes will be notified by email or in-product notice.

5. Cookies & local storage

Northstar uses only strictly necessary storage — there are no advertising, analytics, or cross-site tracking cookies, which is why you do not see a consent banner:

• Authentication tokens (Supabase) — keep you signed in.
• Preference and state storage (browser localStorage) — theme (light/dark), display modes, watchlists/portfolio cache, and similar functional state. This data stays in your browser.
• Stripe cookies — set by Stripe on its checkout and billing-portal pages for payment security and fraud prevention (see Stripe's own cookie policy).

You can clear this storage at any time via your browser settings; doing so signs you out and resets local preferences. If we ever add analytics or other non-essential cookies, we will update this notice and ask for consent first where required.

6. Copyright & trademarks

© 2026 Plainview Capital Limited. All rights reserved. The Northstar name, logo, scoring methodology, indicator structure, briefings, and all site content are protected by copyright, database rights, and other intellectual-property laws. Except for the limited licence in section 3.5, no rights are granted.

Third-party company names, tickers, and trademarks appear for identification and research purposes only; their use does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by their owners. Third-party data remains the property of its respective sources.