Good ’Til Cancelled (GTC) orders for options are now available through Alpaca’s Trading API. This release is designed for traders and developers who want their intent to persist beyond the trading day without rebuilding positions every morning. With GTC orders, your options trades stay live until they’re filled or you explicitly cancel them.
For active options traders, this may unlock a more natural way to trade within market dynamics. Options liquidity can appear suddenly, volatility regimes can shift quickly, and fills don’t always happen during a narrow intraday window. GTC orders help let you place your levels once and allow the market to come to you, whether that opportunity shows up today, tomorrow, or next week.
For algorithmic strategies, GTC orders can allow traders to define entries and exits in advance.. By defining entries and exits ahead of time, you can potentially reduce the chance of emotional overrides and operational risk. Your strategy logic lives at the broker, not just in your running process, so even if your system restarts or markets gap at the open, your orders remain active and enforce your predefined risk rules.
This launch is another step toward fully automated, production-grade options trading. GTC orders reduce the need to manually re-enter orders each trading day. Just persistent orders, cleaner workflows, and tighter alignment between strategy design and execution.
While GTC orders add automation, they also introduce new considerations. Because these orders remain active across sessions, an order may fill at a time or price that no longer reflects your original intent. For this reason, GTC orders are best paired with regular reviews, volatility-aware pricing, and clear cancellation rules, ensuring your automation enhances discipline without becoming a source of unintended risk.
To get started, read our guide on how to place your first GTC options order or explore the updated options documentation and start deploying GTC orders in your trading stack today.
*Options trading is not suitable for all investors due to its inherent high risk, which can potentially result in significant losses. Please read Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options before investing in options.
Please note that this article is for general informational purposes only and is believed to be accurate as of the posting date but may be subject to change.
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