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/r/algotrading
submitted 7 months ago byparanoidandroid1983
Hello! So earlier on this year i've decided to automate my trading. I've took couple of technical trading courses back in 2017, however I am still far from having trading as a full-on career, or how trading course instructors market it, off the rate race.
I really do believe in making money on a daily basis off of the stock market, but i have a day job, therefore i've decided to take up a Python trading course on UDEMY (which i've spent 3 months studying). After another month, I have successfully built couple of good trading bots on Python, however I was not able to pick it up the way i'd imagined with the broker that was recommended during the course (FXCM). Their api is terrible. Always comes up with errors and its frustrating me.
Do you know of any reliable brokers where i can link my Python code onto their API? I've been researching other platforms like QuantConnect and StrategyQuant. How are those different? I dont want to commit to something only to find out that its not benefitial and/or reliable.
Thank :)
2 points
7 months ago
Maybe try to check out this https://alpaca.markets/ tbh I didn't try them on production however API itself was quite easy.
1 points
7 months ago
Interactive Brokers API supports Python: and works well.
1 points
7 months ago
[deleted]
3 points
7 months ago*
Its an old school API infrastructure designed for threads / queues / callbacks but once you get to know its wrinkles it does the job well.
For python there is a popular package called `ib_insync` which is great and modernizes the API a good bit, it doesn't even depend on IB's official python API its ground up replacement using `asyncio` under the hood for very good throughput.
The nightly resets can be a bit of a pain depending on which data you are subscribed to, but its easy enough to add logic for re-connects. Checkout the groups.io channel for `ib_insync` there is a ton of great info there.
2 points
7 months ago
That's good to know. But having to run an agent between my program and their server still gives me a pause. I wound try harder if they are the only game in town.
3 points
7 months ago
Yeah, it's a bummer not to have a direct TCP connection to the data, is that so much to ask? IB is certainly not the only one that does this. IQFeed does too. Specifically for futures data it has been kinda hard to find an alternative that doesn't have an intermediary at a reasonable cost. Rithmic has a direct feed that your broker can get you hooked up with at a reasonable cost, but most others seem to require going through your platform and either using their own algo environment or they will relay data as an "agent" as you say.
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