Alpaca and Futu API

[yc47ib]

I would appreciate anyone who had experience using the Alpaca and Futu API to automate their trading, give some comments on them, esp. comparing to IBKR's API and others like Tradestation's.

It seems to me Alpaca could be the future of API for automated trading, and FUTU similar, and Tradestation Easy languages or the similar (Ninja, Multicharts, etc.) are getting outdated, while IBKR is struggling to keep their API users.

I understand that there are many loyal IBKR API users (e.g., @ValeryN, @globalarbtrader ,@guru ?, @userque, @kmiklas), but my engineers' experience with IBKR has been frustrating to say the least.

If anyone has other platform to suggest that beats IBKR, please add this thread too, much appreciated.

We are deciding on one or two platform to invest our time and resources for the next 3-5-10 years horizon. We know IBKR is going to be here for the hardcore coders, and Tradestations and MC for the tempted beginners, but we are not sure they will still be among the top ranked ones if they stay where they are now without some major overhauls.

Thank you.

 

[guru]

I would appreciate anyone who had experience using the Alpaca and Futu API

Why would you want to hear from amateurs who can’t use professional products and brokers like IB, but use primitive solutions like Alpaca?
And what if people who don’t use those solutions could provide more valuable professional opinion than amateurs who use Alpaca ?

I’m poking fun, but you seem to be biased and your question sounds like “I’m interested in Toyota drivers’ opinions because I’ve tried Lexus and didn’t like it” (in this case both made by the same company to introduce less bias between brands)

I think that more reasonable (or just as reasonable) question may be to pros who don’t use Alpaca and why they don’t or can’t use it...

 

[terr]

Why would you want to hear from amateurs who can’t use professional products and brokers like IB, but use primitive solutions like Alpaca?

I don't know about Alpaca, but I have used literally a dozen of brokers' APIs and among them the "professional" IB is absolutely the worst. Various wrappers may make it more manageable for people, but the API itself sucks. It was not designed well in the first place and the way it organically grew over the years made it a mess.

Just as an example: the market data API receives bids, asks, lasts, high, low, volume - separately and not necessarily together for a symbol. So your sequence of records received may be: a bid record for AAPL, then a last price record for MSFT, then a last for AAPL, volume for FB, ask for MSFT, etc. That's because the API was designed for TWS, which just shows the various parts of data it receives on the screen. To make it useful for you, you have to assemble these fragments together. No one else does it like that. Eek.

 

[guru]

I don't know about Alpaca, but I have used literally a dozen of brokers' APIs and among them the "professional" IB is absolutely the worst.

At least you’ve tried IB but I’m not sure how many kids using Alpaca did.
I also know there are other API used by pros, and you confirmed my point that it may not be Alpaca.
So I guess the OP should be asking people like you for opinions, not people who use Alpaca, which was my point.

I know it’s technically convoluted and I hate IB API but there are plenty of reasons I use it, and even more reasons I can’t use Alpaca.
I’d be interested to know what you’re using and why, but this is OP’s thread with his question to Alpaca users, which I guess may be the reason for your brief answer as well.

 

[terr]

guru: I program Medved Trader - so I am quite familiar with all the different brokers' APIs. We started way back by reverse-engineering Datek's and Scottrade's feeds by sniffing the traffic and figuring it out And back then bandwidth was at a premium so the feeds were bit-compressed etc. Why waste 8 bytes on a small value when 5 bits will do

We (my bro and I) also were in charge of the API side of a major broker for a while.

We looked at Alpaca and just didn't have enough demand from our users for it. The market data Alpaca provides is, if free, very limited and, if not free, pretty expensive ($49/mo), compared to free TDA data. We may still connect to it if we get some users asking for it. Judging by the requests, I don't think Alpaca has a big market share.

I still wonder how TDA does free data for everyone. I guess it's the economy of scale.

 

[terr]

Ah I just looked again and in order to use Alpaca API the brokerage client has to create an API key. No other stock brokerage that I know of does that, this is usually what cyber exchanges do.

It would be a friction point for our app's clients to do that. Yes, it is pretty simple to do, but it is an inconvenience.

 

[DiceAreCast]

This is how the market updates bid, offers, volume,... Has nothing to do with IB at all. Any junior coder learned in his 2nd oop class how to handle this kind of data stream.

I don't know about Alpaca, but I have used literally a dozen of brokers' APIs and among them the "professional" IB is absolutely the worst. Various wrappers may make it more manageable for people, but the API itself sucks. It was not designed well in the first place and the way it organically grew over the years made it a mess.

Just as an example: the market data API receives bids, asks, lasts, high, low, volume - separately and not necessarily together for a symbol. So your sequence of records received may be: a bid record for AAPL, then a last price record for MSFT, then a last for AAPL, volume for FB, ask for MSFT, etc. That's because the API was designed for TWS, which just shows the various parts of data it receives on the screen. To make it useful for you, you have to assemble these fragments together. No one else does it like that. Eek.

 

[DiceAreCast]

You keep on saying "nobody else does that". Yes many others do that, including Refinitiv, Bloomberg,... May I venture to say that perhaps it is you who is a little ill informed.

Ah I just looked again and in order to use Alpaca API the brokerage client has to create an API key. No other stock brokerage that I know of does that, this is usually what cyber exchanges do.

It would be a friction point for our app's clients to do that. Yes, it is pretty simple to do, but it is an inconvenience.

 

[terr]

You keep on saying "nobody else does that". Yes many others do that, including Refinitiv, Bloomberg,... May I venture to say that perhaps it is you who is a little ill informed.

Neither Refinitiv nor Bloomberg are retail brokerages. If you know of a retail brokerage that requires an API key before its clients can connect to their API, please tell.

 

[DiceAreCast]

LMAX, Pepperstone, Baxter,... Come to mind out of the top of my head

Neither Refinitiv nor Bloomberg are retail brokerages. If you know of a retail brokerage that requires an API key before its clients can connect to their API, please tell.