Is there an app that I can track my portfolio like my gains and losses. The alpaca dashboard isn’t easy enough to use for this. Thanks!
I use google sheets but right now I’m getting a 404. So I’m trying to figure that one out. Here is some more information about it. Google Spreadsheet Trading - Documentation | Alpaca
so you haven’t found an app for it. Basically since they are not part of Plaid, I was hoping someone built something to track the it. I really dont want to use google spreadsheets.
its a good idea to, as i do it myself… i also like to keep in mind “what i could have made”
after fixing bugs, and charting the two profit types
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I use TraderVue as a journal to track my momentum on a daily basis if it’s anything kinda close to what you’re trying to achieve. Wrote a simple script that hits api.get_activities and export it into a generic csv format tradervue reads. Provides me some really good insight.
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Yeah interesting, just wish it was more like an app based platform and not spreadsheets. But I guess it will do
I hear that a lot within this community. My personal opinion is that sometimes many active users of Alpaca Markets, especially those that are not developers by nature or find it difficult developing in general forget what Alpaca Markets is first, which is a brokerage API.
Rather than be a TD Ameritrade or Fidelity where you are locked into their platform, their products, their features Alpaca Markets provides you all the abilities to create your own P/L tracker, tailored to your liking.
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i want to make something free (open source) for people like you at some point. it just might F*** up the market if its done though thats that bad side
My partner and I have built a portfolio management app that retrieves transactions via API to model the user’s historical portfolio, historical returns, etc. It is a professional grade app that e.g. follows the CFA’s GIPS standards for time weighted returns, etc.
We haven’t integrated Alpaca’s API yet, but do reach out if this is something that would be useful to you and I’ll make sure you are notified when we have connectivity to Alpaca.
Thanks,
Xavier Robitaille
featherfinance.com
@Surfer592 I’m building an app that lets you track your gains and your losses.
you can place orders filled on Alpaca, and use the API to see your positions and order history.
I’ve created another feature that let’s add stocks to collections and view the gains and losses.
Let me know if you’re interested in trying it out and I can send you an invite code.
Just sent you a message
You can use Arcade Trader for FREE. Check this out:
It works with Alpaca. I’m using it to mirror the ARKG fund.
Have you tried TradingView?
If you just want the numbers, it is easily done in Python. For charting your P/L and stuff like that, you have to include more stuff and maybe build a GUI. But TBH I don’t see anything difficult about the Dashboard. It is a little bit primitive, is all.
If you really want a complete turnkey platform with all the bells and whistles, you kind of need to switch to a more mature brokerage. Try Interactive Brokers. Nearly any feature you could think of is in their Trader WorkStation app. Runs on Linux, as well as those other operating systems. Alpaca really is geared more toward the tinkerer who wants to roll his own platform, and it is not bad for that.
Thank you, yea I’m aware and I love trading on TradingView, I just want more data analyzed to do better portfolio management.
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Hi, I’m looking for an app to track gains and losses on Alpaca. If you’re still inviting people to try out your app I’m interested, thanks.
Hi, featherfinance.com recently got the green light from Alpaca to link via OAuth. We’re a portfolio management web app. Helping users keep track of gains and losses is exactly what we’re trying to do.
Would love to try to get the app to work for your account. Give us a try. We’re open to feature requests (e.g. we’ve implemented the tagging of individual trading strategies to help Alpaca track the PL of different algos).
It’s very straightforward to connect your Alpaca account:
Xavier
Hi Xavier,
Thanks for replying with info about Feather Finance. I signed up and linked my Alpaca account.
First of all, I can see that Feather Finance has the potential to address a significant need by providing portfolio insight and analysis via time-weighted returns. Calculating returns and reconciling trades for a portfolio of assets through time is no easy feat.
Some feedback:
The layout is clean and minimal, which is great. I really like the choice of dark background and overall color scheme.
It’s nice to have a selection of benchmarks from which to choose in the performance section rather than a single S&P standard.
I wasn’t sure how to filter by symbol (I played around until I figured out that I needed to click on the symbol next to the word Symbol). Having the ability to filter by symbol offers further granularity. This is a fantastic feature.
A note about the Filters pop-up: the Select All and Clear options are obscured at the top of the list. This could be a browser issue (I’m usually on Safari). Here’s a screenshot:
A question about shorts:
My very basic understanding is that calculating returns for short positions can be very tricky, but I don’t know what issues make it so challenging. Do you know where I can read/research more on this?
And finally, a request:
Would it be possible to reconcile trades in my account back to ~ August 4 (after LB/BBWI corporate actions)? I’ve had difficulty validating and analyzing my trading results with Alpaca. Sometimes Alpaca’s equity report and portfolio history endpoint are not updated for 2-3 days at a time (this seems to coincide with high market volatility) and I cannot fully analyze what is driving the returns during those periods.
Thanks!
~Tif
Hi,
Thanks for the feedback – it is much appreciated! (and yes, I think you identified a bug on safari – we’re usually on chrome)
To answer your question, we should be able to provide you with more history for your alpaca account. We are currently developing a PL analysis report that will help us provide more history while also making sure backdated valuations are accurate. This report will also help you analyse your PL on a day to day basis.
The reason we only provided one week of portfolio history upon signup was because we wanted to make sure the numbers coming out of FF were accurate. We noticed, like you did, that Alpaca’s paper portfolio valuations appear to be off from time to time, which prevents us from reconciling backdated portfolios (hence the short history provided upon signup).
I have to warn you to interpret the time-weighted returns we calculate on short positions with care. I.e. if you filter out the long positions that are in your portfolio and analyse only the returns on your short positions, take the numbers with a pinch of salt. We have not vetted all possible edge cases, and the returns on short positions are notoriously tricky to calculate & interpret (because of the negative market value). Here’s an article that discusses the difficulties with the methodology:
https://blog.confluence.com/abnormal-returns-returns-for-short-positions-and-portfolios
Will get back to you shortly.
Xavier
It should now work. The easiest way to get your history is to reset your portfolio and re-import your transaction history from scratch:
- Top Right Menu >> Profile >> “Reset my Account”
- Top Left Menu >> “Refresh Linked Accounts”
Note that it can take up to ~1 minute to update your portfolio given the large number of transactions (optimizations are in the pipeline to speed things up).
We’ve developed a PL Attribution report to help users slice and dice their PL:
position_pl = position_as_of_start_date x market_changenew_trades_pl = PL of trades in period startDate:endDate
and, because you only have activities of type “FILL” for this period:
PL = mtm_end_date - mtm_start_date = position_pl + new_trades_pl
Also note that:
- note that the current version of this spreadsheet assumes all activities are of type “FILL” (which are the only activities you have in your portfolio).
- both sources of PL (i.e. Position PL & New Trades PL) are broken down by symbol so that you can pin point where your profit or losses are coming from.
- PL in cell F7 should reconcile with PL in cell F12 (if you’re analyzing PL over a period of several days, these may not reconcile e.g. if there are too many transactions for the number of rows in our spreadsheet)
- also note that you will be the first beta user of this spreadsheet, so bear with us if any kinks need to be ironed out.
Hi Xavier,
Thanks so much for providing a way to reconcile historical trades on Feather Finance. I have reset my portfolio as instructed and will review and get back to you with questions.
This PL Attribution report looks like a great way to get a more granular look at account data and analyze performance. I’ll dig into this more later in the week. No worries about being a beta user, happy to provide feedback and reach out to you for help.
Thanks as well for providing a link to that article about time-weighted returns on short positions. I can see that calculating short returns can be very tricky.
Cheers,
~Tif
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