Getting 403 error when palcing sell orders

Alpaca Trading
1

I have a program that places “buy” orders on alpaca and after I get a position I place a trailing stop sell order, but that request fails sometimes with a 403 status code.

I’ve done some investigation and the body of a failed request says that I have 0 (zero) available qty, because I already placed sell orders for that symbol but those didn’t get filled yet or something like that. I am not an expert in trading in general am just a programmer, so I am just wondering why would I get a 403 error as that indicates that my keys are invalid but they are not because I am doing the same for other symbols and it works.

Can someone please verify that this is why I am getting 403 or that I am missing something, thanks.

2

@Dusan The 403 error is generally used anytime you are Forbidden from doing something. In other words, the request is valid but it is forbidden so it’s rejected. Common reasons for a 403 error are incorrect API keys, not enough buying power for an order, or not enough available quantity in a sell order. There are others but those are what I see most often. In this case the 403 error is because the order is attempting to sell more shares than the account holds.

Below are some of the log messages when you got the 403 errors (there were 102 total for two days). In all cases, the algo placed an accepted sell order which closed out the position (ie 0 quantity left), but immediately, often within 500ms, another identical order was received trying to sell those same shares. Each time that happened the order was rejected with a 403 error.

timestamp	               	    order_request	                                  error
Jul 17, 2024 @ 11:28:11.033	200	\symbol\":\"STX\",\"qty\":\"1\",\"side\":\"sell	
Jul 17, 2024 @ 11:28:11.418	403	\symbol\":\"STX\",\"qty\":\"1\",\"side\":\"sell "err_body"{\"available\":\"0\",\"code\":40310000,\"existing_qty\":\"2\",\"held_for_orders\":\"2\",

Jul 17, 2024 @ 13:57:35.792	200	\symbol\":\"GPC\",\"qty\":\"2\",\"side\":\"sell	
Jul 17, 2024 @ 13:57:36.613	403	\symbol\":\"GPC\",\"qty\":\"2\",\"side\":\"sell "err_body":"{\"available\":\"0\",\"code\":40310000,\"existing_qty\":\"2\",\"held_for_orders\":\"2\
Jul 17, 2024 @ 13:57:37.008	403	\symbol\":\"GPC\",\"qty\":\"2\",\"side\":\"sell	"err_body":"{\"available\":\"0\",\"code\":40310000,\"existing_qty\":\"2\",\"held_for_orders\":\"2\
Jul 17, 2024 @ 13:59:10.049	403	\symbol\":\"GPC\",\"qty\":\"2\",\"side\":\"sell	"err_body":"{\"available\":\"0\",\"code\":40310000,\"existing_qty\":\"2\",\"held_for_orders\":\"2\
Jul 17, 2024 @ 13:59:10.432	403	\symbol\":\"GPC\",\"qty\":\"2\",\"side\":\"sell	"err_body":"{\"available\":\"0\",\"code\":40310000,\"existing_qty\":\"2\",\"held_for_orders\":\"2\
Jul 17, 2024 @ 13:59:11.210	403	\symbol\":\"GPC\",\"qty\":\"2\",\"side\":\"sell	"err_body":"{\"available\":\"0\",\"code\":40310000,\"existing_qty\":\"2\",\"held_for_orders\":\"2\
Jul 17, 2024 @ 13:59:11.976	403	\symbol\":\"GPC\",\"qty\":\"2\",\"side\":\"sell	"err_body":"{\"available\":\"0\",\"code\":40310000,\"existing_qty\":\"2\",\"held_for_orders\":\"2\
Jul 17, 2024 @ 13:59:12.754	403	\symbol\":\"GPC\",\"qty\":\"2\",\"side\":\"sell	"err_body":"{\"available\":\"0\",\"code\":40310000,\"existing_qty\":\"2\",\"held_for_orders\":\"2\
Jul 17, 2024 @ 13:59:14.392	403	\symbol\":\"GPC\",\"qty\":\"2\",\"side\":\"sell	"err_body":"{\"available\":\"0\",\"code\":40310000,\"existing_qty\":\"2\",\"held_for_orders\":\"2\
Jul 17, 2024 @ 14:01:41.429	403	\symbol\":\"GPC\",\"qty\":\"2\",\"side\":\"sell	"err_body":"{\"available\":\"0\",\"code\":40310000,\"existing_qty\":\"2\",\"held_for_orders\":\"2\

Your algo should check for any open orders before placing another identical order.

Does that help with your debugging?