Seeking Advice on Avoiding Fractional Holdings

Getting Started with Alpaca
1

Hi All,

I am hoping someone might have some advice for me regarding how to avoid losses due to fractional holdings of assets–specifically crypto.

  • I am trying to avoid market orders, which typically result in a large loss due to taker fees
  • I am trying to only use limit orders, which have less fees and therefore less loss
  • Limit orders do not work with fractional amounts
  • My algo only purchases whole number quantities of an asset so that I can place limit orders based on direction (to take profit or prevent losses)
  • However, when I purchase a whole number quantity of an asset (for example, 1, 2, 3 etc shares) I often receive slightly less (.985, 1.985, 2.985) etc.
  • The result is that my limit orders are placed for the whole number amount, leaving me with a fraction of a share as seen below.
  • Because I do not wish to incur market order fees, I’m pretty much stuck with a fraction of an asset that, combined with similar holdings, is adding up to a significant loss, due to the fact that my algo cannot sell it via limit order
  • I cannot place a limit order for, say, 1.015 of an asset, to bring my holdings to a whole number after accounting for fees, because we cannot place fractional limit orders.

Has anyone encountered this issue? Does anyone have a strategy for dealing with this scenario?

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@Philip_Isles You stated " * Limit orders do not work with fractional amounts. I cannot place a limit order for, say, 1.015 of an asset … because we cannot place fractional limit orders." That’s not correct. One can place fractional limit orders. Below is an example from the dashboard (the API s similar) where I’m selling 0.002929641 of BTCUSD (my entire holdings) and have set a limit price of $62,685. The UI is a bit wonky in that it rounds the display of the entered quantity, but you can enter the full 9 decimals. This is seen in the ‘Review your order’ section.

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What are you experiencing which makes you feel you cannot place a fractional limit order?

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I’m specifically referring to the API documentation for Create an order which says that qty can be fractional for market and day order types only:

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@Philip_Isles Ah, that documentation refers to equity orders (and needs to be updated). There is an overview of crypto orders here. There it states

The following order types are supported: market, limit and stop_limit

Apologies for the confusion.

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It’s good news, in the long run. Guess I have some logic to comment out. Thank you