Alpaca provides you with different market data depending upon your plan type. Below is a summary of the data feeds available. Currently, we only provide data for U.S. listed equities. Free plan Users that have signed up with Alpaca will receive free real-time data as a default from IEX. Please note that this data feed only includes quotes and trades occurring on the order books of IEX. Unlimited plan Users who sign up to the Unlimited plan, are provided with a consolidated U.
Alpaca Paper Only Account (Paper-Trading) Anyone globally can create an Alpaca Paper Only Account! All you need to do is sign up with your email address. An Alpaca Paper Only Account is for paper trading only. It allows you to fully utilize the Alpaca API and run your algorithm in our paper trading environment only. You won’t be trading real money, but you will be able to track your simulated activity and balance in the Alpaca web dashboard.
Paper trading is free and available to all Alpaca users Paper trading is a real-time simulation environment where you can test your code. You can reset and test your algorithm as much as you want using free, real-time market data. Everything on the broker side behaves the same way as the live account except the orders aren’t routed to the real exchanges. Instead, the system simulates the order filling based on the real-time quotes.
Fractional shares are fractions of a whole share, meaning that you don’t need to buy a whole share to own a portion of a company. You can now buy as little as $1 worth of shares for over 2,000 US equities. By default all Alpaca accounts are allowed to trade fractional shares in both live and paper environments. Please make sure you reset your paper account if you run into any issues dealing with fractional shares.
Using Alpaca Trade API, a user can monitor, place and cancel their orders with Alpaca. Each order has a unique identifier provided by the client. This client-side unique order ID will be automatically generated by the system if not provided by the client, and will be returned as part of the order object along with the rest of the fields described below. Once an order is placed, it can be queried using the client-side order ID or system-assigned unique ID to check the status.
In order to trade on margin or sell short, you must have $2,000 or more account equity. Accounts with less than $2,000 will not have access to these features and will be restricted to 1x buying power. How Margin Works Trading on margin allows you to trade and hold securities with a value that exceeds your account equity. This is made possible by funds loaned to you by your broker, who uses your account’s cash and securities as collateral.
We have enabled several types of protections to enhance your trading experience. Pattern Day Trader (PDT) Protection Day Trade Margin Call (DTMC) Protection Pattern Day Trader (PDT) Protection at Alpaca In order to prevent Alpaca Brokerage Account customers from unintentionally being designated as a Pattern Day Trader (PDT), the Alpaca Trading platform checks the PDT rule condition every time an order is submitted from a customer. If the order could potentially result in the account being flagged as a PDT, the order is rejected, and API returns error with HTTP status code 403 (Forbidden).