The Algo Trading Model is Live!

I am now using a Paper Trading account using Alpaca!

The paper trading account seeds you with $100K of money. This is a bit similar to the Investopedia Simulator, except that you can work with this account programmatically through APIs. It looks like a lot of day traders (options, derivatives, et al) use this. But I am using it just to buy and sell stocks.

Their user interface is a bit confusing, but with the help of some Python, I am able to get the status information I need. For example, the Positions tab doesn't carry much information. You have to actually consult the Orders tab, and marry things together to get a fuller view.

I needed a Portfolio Manager to make decisions on trading. I was going to use an Agentic AI approach using Langchain, or maybe Crew or MCP. Something along that vein.  But the AIs themselves, pointed out that these are too quirky and "black box" to be able to rely on them in a real trading situation. They suggested I go with a Deterministic approach.

So - with the help of an LLM that is trained on more technical topics, I had it generate me a few drafts until I saw something that looked simple enough to get started with.  It simply takes the predictions csv, and uses that as input for its trading. It will buy positions, hold them for 5 days, and sell them. Simple enough.