Hi
I observed that part of my paper account buying power balance vanishes once I liquidate or sell off majority of my assets in the paper account.
Here is the snap shot, can some one please point to be me whats happening, given this is a paper account and all the orders have been filled. The current Day Trading Buying Power expected should be 4xEquity = 416334.64. Note the Cash for Trading is 104015.66, but buying power is not 4x anymore. ?
Usage: I was thinking of using buying power for long/short transactions like below, where CAPITAL is indicated as amount I am interested to trade with,
buypower = float(api.get_account().buying_power) - CAPITAL*(int(api.get_account().multiplier)-1)
This becomes self limiting as the transactions are made buypower is reduced and I dont have to worry about Margin calls. This is breaking as buypower in alpaca is not behaving as I was expecting
Let me know the correct approach here.
Thanks
“Day Trade Buying Power” is calculated each day based upon the previous end-of-day “Excess Margin” times 4. In this case the last close Excess Margin was $73,466.68. Therefore, the current Day Trading Buying Power will be 4 times that or $293,866.72. It will never go above that for the entire day. Tomorrow it will get reset based upon todays excess margin. There is an SEC memo which explains a it more here.
What do you mean “where CAPITAL is indicated as amount I am interested to trade with”? Is that for a specific trade (ie I want to buy $5000 of TSLA do I have enough buying power)? or is it the amount you want your portfolio to trade (ie I have $10000 in equity in the account I want to use 1.5 leverage so my trading capital is $15,000).
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Dan,
Thanks a lot, i figured when i went on this link ,
CAPITAL(local variable) limits how much buying power i want to use, and can be used both for specific trade as well as portfolio trade with leverage like you mentioned. 
