Alpaca Resources | Developer API for commission-free stock trading

Alpaca OAuth Integration with React and Firebase (Pt. 1)

By using React and FIrebase, we show you an efficient way to rapidly prototype your app idea for free with Alpaca OAuth.

Use Cases

Creating a Telegram Bot using NodeJS, Alpaca API, and QuickCharts

Today we will show you how to make a very simple telegram bot. To do this, we will use the Node JS programming language.

Market Data

Generating Alternative Bars in Alpaca (Part 1 - Introduction)

Showing you how to generate various alternative bars especially event-driven bars like tick bars, volume bars and dollar bars

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Alpaca & Backtrader: Tools of the Trade (Part 1)

RSI stack strategy w/ Alpaca and Backtrader. In #1, we'll cover connecting the Backtrader backtesting to Alpaca to load in data for multiple time frames.

Code Examples

A Simple Stock Screener Using Node.js

Showing you how to make a very easy Stock Market Checker using Node.js that could find a correlation between the current and previous prices.

Open Office Hour

Alpaca Founders Yoshi & Hitoshi Talk About Alpaca Story, Vision, Roadmap at the 1st Open Office Hour

Alpaca's co-founders Yoshi and Hitoshi casually talked about the story, vision, and roadmap at the 1st open office hour last week.

Trading Contest

Alpaca Trading Competition Vol 00 Leaderboard

Leaderboard for Alpaca Trading Competition Vol 00, where all the quants, developers, tech-savvy traders can participate globally

Trading Contest

Trading Contest Fine Print - Rules

Contest rule for the Alpaca Trading Competition, where all the developers, quants, tech-savvy traders can participate globally

Code Examples

How I Built an Elixir Wrapper for Alpaca API

James Russo, Software Engineer at Brex, writes about how he built an Elixir wrapper for the Alpaca API.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Concurrent Scalping Algo Using Async Python

Automating My Manual Scalping Trading Strategy - One of the advantages of running algorithmic trading strategies is that you can quickly and consistently act on price action.

Use Cases

Trade & Account Streaming with Slack - Building a Slackbot (Part 3)

Detailing how to implement account and trade updates streaming with Slack and your Alpaca account.

Use Cases

Adding More Trading Commands - Building a Slackbot (Part 2)

This article is the second installment of a 3-part series, detailing how to add more functionality to the Slackbot I created in the first installment.

Use Cases

Stock Trading Using a Slackbot - Building a Slackbot (Part 1)

Hi, I’m Andrew, an intern at Alpaca from Northwestern! As a college student curious about both tech and financial spaces, I was able to leverage Alpaca’s trading API to build a Slackbot.

Use Cases

Trade Stocks in Your Browser Using Google Colab & Alpaca API

Google Colab allowing you to run Python Jupyter Notebook in the cloud. Introducing to utilize this environment for quant finance and algorithmic trading.

Code Examples

Martingale Day-Trading with the Alpaca Trading API

Testing out an old betting system Martingale with algorithmic trading in Python. This article talks about applying a theoretical betting strategy to a day-trading algorithm’s position sizing.

Use Cases

Manually Trading Stocks Using Postman and the Alpaca API

You can manually trade stocks using Postman with Alpaca Trading API. This is one of how-to getting started and testing the API.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Long-Short Algorithmic Trading in JavaScript (Node.js) Using Stock API

In this post, I will be sharing how I created a simple Long-Short Equity trading script in JavaScript (a Node.js app) using Alpaca’s free paper trading API.

Code Examples

How to Build a DIY Socially Responsible Investing Robo - A Farewell to Swell

Founded in 2017, Swell was an investment advisor and platform that focused exclusively on socially responsible investing. Here is how you can build one DIY.

Hedge Fund Basics

Algorithmic Trading through a Business Account at Alpaca

Alpaca now supports business accounts who want to do algorithmic trading. This post should help you to find why useful to trade through a business entity such as a startup hedge fund, prop trading firm etc.

Use Cases

Building a Twitter Bot to Tweet My Trades

I thought it would be great to share my trading activity through Twitter for a realtime view of all executions. So here is how to build a twitter bot to tweet my trades.

Code Examples

A Simple Mean Reversion Stock Trading Script in C#

A code snippet for a simple mean reversion stock trading in C#. We use fundamental analysis in this algorithmic trading.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Python & AWS to Run a Simple Trading Algorithm

This is a step-by-step guide to run a simple trading algorithm using Python, AWS, and Alpaca Trading API.

Code Examples

Introducing an Open Source Mobile App — Alpaca Dashboard

Introducing an example mobile app “Alpaca Dashboard” on the App Store and its code in full open-sourced on the GitHub repo. The app is built on React Native.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

PythonAnywhere to Run a Simple Trading Algorithm

Using PythonAnywhere to run a trading algorithm in the cloud - The biggest area of resistance for newbie quant traders is running an algorithm live in the cloud.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Day-Trading Algorithm to Run in the Cloud Using Only Free Services

I will show you how to do commission-free stock trading (algorithmic trading) on a free Google Cloud Platform instance, step-by-step. Free & Free.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

HFT-like Trading Algorithm in 300 Lines of Code You Can Run Now

As a developer, I decided to do research to figure out myself on how I could build similar things to what HFTs do after wondering what's so special about hedge funds and HFTs.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Algorithmically Detecting (and Trading) Technical Chart Patterns with Python

Ever wondered how to programmatically define technical patterns in market data? Here is how to define chart patterns.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Easily Visualize the Correlation of Your Portfolio in Python

In this article, I will show how you can make “roll-your-own” visualizations, using the Alpaca API with Python.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Quantopian vs Alpaca — When Paper Trading Your Algorithms

Comparing Quantopian and Alpaca. Back-testing and paper-trading are the important final steps to the development of any trading algorithms, allowing you to verify its results on out of sample data.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Calculating Cost of Algorithmic Trading

In recent years, both market spread and trading commissions have dropped dramatically. How much do these costs affect the profitability of algorithmic trading?

Use Cases

For Excel Persons - How to Pull Market Data with VBA

If you know nothing about coding, the VBA with Excel solution is a good way to dive into automated trading on a familiar platform without learning different development environments and software.

Use Cases

VBA & Excel with Alpaca Trading API - The GET Tutorial

This tutorial will focus on GET requests, which simply ask the endpoint for some information (like current market positions for an account) of your Alpaca account by using VBA and Excel.

Market Data

An Introduction to Market Data APIs and their Usage

Data is a critical component of any trading or investing strategy, and that holds true for the casual, once-a-quarter investor to the professional day trader.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Exploring the Differences Between U.S. Stock Market Data Feeds

An important but often underappreciated facet of algo trading is market data. After all, data is what an algorithm uses to make buying and selling decisions.

Market Data

Easily Get Tick-Level Market Data in Python with Alpaca API

Grab tick-level market data using Python with Alpaca API before tackling the bigger project of building and implementing an automated trading strategy.

Use Cases

Using Insomnia REST Client for Alpaca’s Trading API

Using Insomnia REST Client for Alpaca Stock Trading API. Testing the code with API means having a tool that is able to make the API request and return the response.

Use Cases

Using the Command Line to Buy/Sell Stocks

For you who feel like living on your command line. This post helps you to try out managing your stock trading from the command line.

Use Cases

Google Spreadsheet to Manage Your Stocks Using API

If you have used a google spreadsheet app with some formula, you are ready for algorithmic trading. Today, I wanted to show you how I built portfolio management using Google Spreadsheet.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Ultimate List of Automated Trading Strategies You Should Know ( Part 1)

There are many use cases for automated trading, particularly when considering different time horizons, tools, and objectives. This is the part 1 of series “Ultimate List of Automated Trading Strategies.”

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Python Library To Run Quantopian Algorithm In Live

Sharing the newest open source libraries for Quantopian users; pylivetrader and pipeline-live.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Best Starting Kits for Algorithmic Trading with C#

Many experts use .NET/C# for its high performance and robustness for algorithmic trading although Python is one of the biggest players in the space.

Code Examples

Replicating ETF in Python with Trading API

It is easy to buy a share of ETF without knowing what’s in there, but as a tech-savvy guy yourself, you may wonder how it works. By reconstructing the fund yourself, you may even come up with something better.

AI/Machine Learning in Trading

Comparing 3 Different Types of Neural Network Architectures in Finance - Intro into Machine Learning for Finance (Part 3)

In this article, we compare three different types of neural network architectures in finance - Intro into Machine Learning for Finance (Part 3)

AI/Machine Learning in Trading

Forecasting Market Movements Using Tensorflow - Intro into Machine Learning for Finance (Part 2)

Is it possible to create a neural network for predicting daily market movements from a set of standard trading indicators using Tensorflow?

AI/Machine Learning in Trading

Intro into Machine Learning for Finance and Trading (Part 1)

There has been increasing talk in recent years about the application of machine learning for prediction. Is machine learning worth investing time and resources into mastering?

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Step-by-Step to Build a Stock Trading Bot

Step-by-step to build a simple moving average cross strategy in algorithmic trading. This uses a few different trading symbols to give a small sample of the how it might fair in live trading.

Market Data

11 Great Financial Market Data Vendors

Whether you’re a financial firm or an individual trader, financial market data is key for putting together any good strategy.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

9 Great Tools for Algorithmic Trading

I’ve put together a list of 9 tools you should consider using for your algorithmic trading process.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Algo Trading for Dummies - Implementing an Actual Trading Strategy (Part 4)

We will use strategies based on technical analysis to run them on the custom backtester finally.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Algo Trading for Dummies - Building a Custom Back-tester (Part 3)

Building a back-tester can provide the framework for the order handling module of your trading bot.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Algo Trading for Dummies - 3 Useful Tips When Storing Trade Signals (Part 2)

The efficient handling and storage of trading signals can be one of the most complex aspects of a live trading system.

Algorithmic Trading Basics

Algo Trading for Dummies - Collecting & Storing The Market Data (Part 1)

The lifeblood of any algorithmic trading system is, of course, its data — so that’s what we’ll cover in the first two posts of the mini-series.

Code Examples

I Built a Go Plugin for Alpaca’s MarketStore as a College Intern

Hey all! I’m Ethan and recently started working for Alpaca as a Software Engineering Intern! For my first task, I created a Go plugin for Alpaca’s open source MarketStore server that fetches and writes Binance minute-level.

Use Cases

I’m a College Student and I Finished Building a Robo Advisor (Part 3)

This article marks the official end of the robo advisor project. It gave me the opportunity to work at Alpaca, jump into a new space, and motivated me to start writing about my experiences.

Use Cases

I'm a College Student, and I'm Still Building my Robo-Advisor (Part 2)

We’ve now created a functional robo advisor on Quantopian. But, the IDE puts limits on the scale and sophistication of our work. Let's extend this further with Zipline.

Code Examples

I am a College Student and I Built My Own Robo Advisor (Part 1)

I’m Rao, and I’m an intern at Alpaca working on building an open-source robo advisor. This post is the combination of various threads and forums that I read through looking for answers.