Daily Change on Paper Account Not Accurate

Getting Started with Alpaca
1

I’m running some API trades with a very short time span of a few minutes and I noticed that the daily change amount doesn’t seem to be accurate. Best example, this morning I executed a buy and a few minutes later a sell. The transaction history on the dashboard showed a buy at $49.73 and a few minutes later a sell at $49.77. If my math is correct that should be a 4 cent gain but the daily change only shows 1 cent. No other trades have/had occurred, this one the only trade.

Other times the resulting trade seems to be accurately reflected in the daily change amount.

What am I misunderstanding?
Thanks

2

@Ken_Hubacher The P/L, or more specifically the average entry price of a position is calculated a bit differently for intraday trades vs positions held overnight. Intraday trades use the compressed FIFO method for determining cost basis. This is basically the weighted average price of trades for the day. There is a bit more info in the FAQs here.

Could that be the issue? If not, what is the order number(s) of the trades and I may be able to provide more detail.

3

Thanks Dan, I appreciate the quick response.

I’m not sure this falls into the FIFO issue etc.. but maybe I’m not following that particular logic 100%.

My tests are very basic and straight forward. For the example I used earlier, I’ll expand a few points.

I don’t have outstanding open shares. My tests are very simple, I buy and then a few minutes later I sell leaving nothing outstanding.

This morning I had not executed any trades prior to this next step.
Then at 8:43am (central time, so while the market was open) I was bought 1 share of IBIT (ETF) for $49.73.
I then sold that that 1 share at 8:45am @ $49.77 and the daily change showed .01.
This shows up in the order dashboard for Alpaca as well as the response in the API with those same prices.

The orderid for the buy and then sell are:
795f8395-3c53-4ee4-9ffd-d7f9f60f1135
85fc0411-0ac1-4e10-916a-9d75e45d3fa1

This is a cut/paste from the dashboard:
IBIT
Market sell 1.00 1.00 49.77 filled access_key Mar 24, 2025, 08:45:00 AM Mar 24, 2025, 08:45:01 AM Mar 24, 2025, 03:00:00 PM
IBIT
Market buy 1.00 1.00 49.73 filled access_key Mar 24, 2025, 08:43:05 AM Mar 24, 2025, 08:43:06 AM Jun 20, 2025, 03:00:00 PM

And if I pull the orders via the API I get the same information as the dashboard.

On Friday I pulled all my orders and calculated the P/L for that day and it was different from the daily change by about 5 cents.
I guess the main question would be, if you take the order history (dashboard OR API) and run the P/L for the day, should that not accurately equal the daily change? Because it often is a few cents different.

Thanks
Ken

4

FWIW, the day ended and after all of the trades that occurred today, the daily change shows -.1 (negative 10 cents). Pulling the history through the API AND ALSO calculating the P/L through the dashboard history both shows -.04 for the day.

5

@Ken The reason you feel your equity is off is probably the REG and TAF fees. Could that be it?

I do the math and it matches.

 99,997.70 EOD equity 2025-03-19
-      .05 REG fee from 2025-03-19
-      .01 TAF fee from 2025-03-19
-      .04 net trades 2025-03-24
____________________
 99,997.60  EOD equity 2025-03-24
1 Like
6

Doh! My stupid mistake, thanks Dan for all the help!