How to liquidate all positions before close

Alpaca Trading
1

I have my bot set up and working. I implemented the bot turning itself on and off when the market is open and closed. The one problem I have is figuring out how to get the bot to liquidate all positions let’s say around 5 minutes before market close. Does anyone know the best way to implement this? Thanks!

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2

Try following on your paper account:

api.close_all_positions()

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3

I just wrote this in Python. Haven’t tested during market hours yet, but works with other times.

import datetime as dt
import pytz
import pandas as pd

def close_all_positions_end_of_day():
    #  First, check if the market is currently open. No point in checking if closed.
    if api.get_clock().is_open:
        #  Get the current time (New York time)
        time_now = dt.datetime.now(pytz.timezone('US/Eastern'))

        #  Calculate the timestamp for 5 mins before close (15:55) today.
        five_mins_before_end_of_day = pd.Timestamp(year=time_now.year, month=time_now.month, day=time_now.day, hour=15,
                                                   minute=55, second=00, tz='US/Eastern')

        #  If the current time is the same as (or after) 15:55, close all positions.
        if time_now.isoformat() >= five_mins_before_end_of_day.isoformat():
            print('Closing all positions...')
            api.close_all_positions()
        else:
            print('Not yet 3:55pm!')
    else:
        print('Market currently closed!')

Bear in mind that your bot would need to be regularly/frequently calling this function to check if the current time is at/after the timestamp.

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