Connecting an Alpaca practice account

What Quantis Trade is

Quantis Trade is a website for testing trading ideas. You describe an idea in plain English. Quantis Trade tests it on past prices and shows you what would have happened, with the costs and the risks. You can also follow an idea with pretend money to see how it does from today.

It is for research and practice. Quantis Trade does not place real-money trades.

What a practice account is

A practice account holds pretend money at a broker. Alpaca, a US broker, calls it paper trading. Orders in a practice account behave like real orders, but no real money moves.

Quantis Trade connects practice accounts only. It cannot connect a real-money account.

What connecting does

When you connect your Alpaca practice account, Quantis Trade can:

• read the account's pretend cash, buying power and holdings, to show them to you on the Connections page;
• send an order to the account when you ask it to. Today the only order is one test share, sent when you press "Send test order (pretend money)";
• check the account regularly, to make sure what Alpaca holds matches Quantis Trade's own record.

Quantis Trade cannot change your Alpaca settings, move money, or see your Alpaca password.

How you connect

Connecting a broker account is being tested and is not open to every account yet. If it is open on your account, you will find it on the Connections page, under Practice broker accounts.

1. You go to Alpaca's own website and sign in there. Quantis Trade never sees your Alpaca password.
2. Alpaca shows you what Quantis Trade is asking for. You press Approve, or you say no.
3. Alpaca sends you back to Quantis Trade. Quantis Trade checks it can read your practice account before it keeps anything.

Quantis Trade asks Alpaca for two things: to place and cancel orders, and to read market prices. It also gets Alpaca's standard read access to the account. It does not ask to change your account settings.

You can also connect by pasting an API key from your Alpaca paper trading account instead. Both ways work the same after that.

The safety checks

Before any order leaves, Quantis Trade runs a series of checks in order. If any one says no, nothing is sent. Among them:

• Alpaca's own clock must say the market is open.
• The order must fit your limits. A new connection starts at $1,000 for one order, $3,000 a day and 10 orders a day. The most anyone can set is $5,000, $20,000 and 50.
• The account must hold the cash for a purchase, or the shares for a sale. Nothing is borrowed.
• Nobody has pressed a stop switch: on the connection, on your account, or for the whole site.

If Quantis Trade finds an order or a holding in the account that it did not create, it stops sending orders on that connection and tells you. That is why it is best to use a practice account that nothing else trades in.

What is stored, and how

The access Alpaca gives Quantis Trade is stored encrypted. It is never shown to anyone, never written to a log, and only ever sent back to Alpaca. Your Alpaca password is never seen or stored. Quantis Trade keeps a record of every order it sends and every answer Alpaca gives, so what happened can always be shown.

Disconnecting

You can disconnect at any time on the Connections page. Quantis Trade deletes the stored access straight away and sends nothing more to the account.

Alpaca offers apps no documented way to cancel the approval at Alpaca's end. Once Quantis Trade has deleted its copy, it can no longer use it. If you also want Alpaca to forget the approval, check your Alpaca account or ask Alpaca.

Questions

Write to contact@quantistrade.co.uk. More about who builds Quantis Trade is on the About page.