Portfolios / Sub-accounts

Is there a way I can allocate funds to individual strategies?

I would like to break them up into portfolios like so: https://blog.coinbase.com/introducing-portfolios-on-coinbase-pro-a5a2a2e02996

There is an open thread for sub-accounts here :

Any new news?

15 Likes

I would also like to run multiple algorithms on the same or multiple sub-accounts with the same credentials.
It could be sufficient for paper trading to test several features.

5 Likes

i can second this for live and paper, i need sub dashboards / accounts

4 Likes

Following and also yes!

I think the key would be the feature to allow many paper accounts, each with a separate API key and secret, that different algorithms or variations of algorithms could be tested against (one simple example I really want to play with is market vs. limit / stop limit and other orders, using the same hybrid technical indicator strategy algo - or the other obviously being testing entirely different algos).

This is key to then allow users who are not technical indicator savvy, or algo, or generally trading-savvy to view hypothetical results of different strategies to make a decision on which to use! It is also key for development and ongoing improvements, and then we could continue to track original results vs. subtle tweaks vs. major changes, customizations to technical indicator formulas and logic built on top of them, and R&D of completely new indicators :slight_smile:

What will it take? Can I please help?!

2 Likes

Please add this feature, eagerly waiting for it.

3 Likes

Please add this feature! I want multiple sub-accounts under my account with a separate API key and secret, to allocate a portion of my portfolio value to each one.

My uses:
-Running multiple algorithms: I have 3 different profitable algorithms I want to run at the same time and see which one is better (currently one is Live Trading and the second in Paper). Itā€™d be nice to have all three live trading.
-Efficient money management: If my fund grows significantly, to upscale, Iā€™d need multiple sub-accounts to offset my orders to avoiding market buying millions of dollars. For example, one of my algorithms uses the ā€œclose_all_positions()ā€ function to dump multiple assets at once; instead of buying 10x the amount and dumping each asset in 1/10 increments, i want to close_all_positions() on 10 sub accounts to avoid slippage. A similar issue arises with my other algorithm with managing subsequent partial buys/sells to ā€œfill up the potā€, supporting demand for multiple sub-accounts.

Right now my algorithms can support up to 1-2mil. Itā€™d be nice to be able to support 10mil+ with this feature.

3 Likes

YES! Please introduce the sub account or multiple account feature in Alpaca! I run 3 algos on alpaca live trading. I would like to have 3 sub accounts, one account for one algo. So I can track the performance of each account better. Thank you!

I would also love this feature

Iā€™ve seen people mention they have been able to run sub-portfolios on other threads. Is this officially a feature? Where is the documentation for this?

Sub accounts is definitely on Alpacaā€™s active feature request list. No ETA but will keep everyone posted.

There are a few issues and subtleties which arise with multiple accounts. One is with day trading. Sub-accounts would typically be considered separate accounts. According to FINRA day trading rules

you canā€™t use a cross-guarantee to meet any of the day-trading margin requirements. Each day-trading account is required to meet the minimum equity requirement independently, using only the financial resources available in the account.

In live trading, this rule would require a minimum of $25,000 in each sub-account which a user wishes to day trade. Not an issue in all cases but something to be aware of.

5 Likes

Donā€™t implement as separate accounts. That will be a mess with margin etc. Instead, create multiple views into a single account.

1 Like

bump. this would be an excellent feature.

1 Like

@hitoshi you gonna make us wait another year ?

1 Like

+1

I have been meaning to move my robinhood funds (trading using the unofficial api) into alpaca, however Iā€™ve been waiting on two features. 1) fractional sharesā€¦which got introduced recently and 2) subportfolios. I hacked together a way to handle multiple portfolios with the RH api, but itā€™s a ton of moving pieces that Iā€™d prefer my code wasnā€™t responsible for.

Iā€™ll second/third this.

Iā€™d really like to be able to have multiple accounts (with a single login). Schwab technically allows for unlimited accounts but realistically you can have 6 before you have to call and talk to someone to open more.

+1! Please add this ability :pray:

One way to do this is to tag the trades with a strategy/subaccount label when submitting your orders to Alpaca. You can then slice and dice your Alpaca account by label in Feather Finance, our portfolio management app. We have recently integrated the Alpaca API.

Here are the steps to follow:

  1. Signup for Feather Finance (itā€™s free, and we plan to always have a free tier)
  2. Link your Alpaca account(s) to your Feather Finance account via OAuth.
  3. Prefix a label to the client_order_id you send to Alpaca. Use different labels for your different trading strategies.
  4. Your transactions will feed automatically into Feather Finance, and they will be tagged with the corresponding label.
  5. Analyze the performance of each algo in Feather Finance by filtering by label.

Would love to get some feedback if this is useful to you. Donā€™t hesitate to reach out!

Note that you can also retrieve daily P/L and time weighted returns on specific strategies/labels via API by using our ā€œportfolio/historyā€:

Here is a link to the google sheet in the video:

Yes, I would expect the PDT rule to apply to each subaccount.

indeed, which is why it makes sense to trade all your strategies in one account, while at the same time tagging each trade with a strategy label in order to filter the portfolio and analyze it by strategy.

I used to do that in MQL/MT4. You can do apply comments and ā€˜magic numbersā€™ over there. I liked that platform, but forex got killed for the US and MT4 had other drawbacks, anyway.

Iā€™m brand new here, though. I see that positions are shown in aggregate, rather than individually. Is it that I need to read filled orders? I thought they didnā€™t show after fill, but I wasnā€™t worried about it because I was only planning on working with aggregated positions.