Corporate Actions Handeling

I have had two recent examples of Corporate Actions taking place mid week. These would have both been stock splits. My concern is how Alpaca handles this in Live Money Trading vs PaperTrading.

As you can see below with the most recent example, these would have errored in my favor and the expectation is that Alpaca would have corrected the equity to match the corporate actions.

The previous example was wth CWAN when they did their stock split a few weeks ago.

One of my paper trading accounts has serious Alpaca paper accounting problem:

  • MUU should be 120 shares, but Alpaca still shows 6.
  • KORU should be 180, but shows 9.
  • STHH should be 270, but shows 27.
  • ARMH should be 300, but shows 30.

The prices were split-adjusted, but the quantities were not. This currently understates the account equity by approximately $13,623.51. MUU/KORU had 20-for-1 splits today, while ARMH/STHH had 10-for-1 splits yesterday. Direxion split notice, ARMH OCC notice, ARMH/STHH corporate-action tracker.

Therefore, yesterday’s account result also needs correction: its official-close economic estimate was approximately +$2.73K, not the raw −$3.89K previously reported.

@Tefloncandy Paper accounts mimic live trading very well, but there are some exceptions. One is that paper accounts do not implement any corporate actions such as stock splits or dividends. That is why you are saying the share quantities you are. Unfortunately, there isn’t a good workaround for this other than deleting the account and recreating it.

In live trading all corporate actions are processed on the “payable day”.

Thank you for the quick reply.

@Dan_Whitnable_Alpaca - so can support not delete a ticker that is now inactive due to a merger or buy out? I submitted a ticket last week and asked for it to be removed by a human as the AI support bot said that was the next course of action. It still hasn’t been removed.

CPRX is the ticker and this is the support ticket #322449

Paper Account: PA3MRLE8ANGU

  • Symbol: CPRX
  • Quantity: 777 shares
  • Side: Long
  • Average entry price: $31.49
  • Account type: Paper trading
  • Open orders for CPRX: none