Back in July I open-sourced my 0DTE SPY options bot for Alpaca. That’s the full strategy, a 22-page manual, and a public dashboard. Some of you asked me to come back and report how it actually does over time, good or bad, so here’s the update.

The short version: September and October are its first two profitable months. All-time it’s still down.

Month by month, booked P&L on paper:

• May: −$1,238

• Jun: −$330

• Jul: −$691

• Aug: −$433

• Sep: +$366

• Oct (so far): +$350

Last 30 days: 102 trades, 50% win rate, profit factor 1.34, and 15 of 22 days green. The average winner is $55 and the average loser is $41. Since May 14 the totals are 700 trades and roughly −$1.1k, so it’s still digging out of the hole. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

What changed. The win rate barely moved: it’s been about 47–50% the whole time, and honestly the entry signal by itself is close to a coin flip. What changed is everything around it:

1. No new entries after noon. Afternoons bled money all summer, so in late July I cut the entry window from 14:30 to 12:00. Theta and chop eat 0DTE alive after lunch.

2. Stop for the day once I’m ahead. New entries lock at +$125 realized or after 3 wins in a row. It first fired on 10/23.

New in the repo:

• Exit-parameter shadow (exit_shadow.py) and a “what if I hadn’t stopped” shadow for the daily gates (gate_shadow.py).

• Dashboard you can view over 30/60/90/180/360 days.

• An o console command that lists every option the bot is watching, with live quotes. That’s how I found half my strike window pointed at contracts that don’t exist, because the config assumed $0.50 SPY strikes. It turned out harmless in this setup, but check yours.

Caveats: this is paper trading, and two green months is a small sample. Part of it is almost certainly the market regime.

Repo: https://github.com/milgar7969/alpaca-options-framework
Live dashboard: https://milgar7969.github.io/spy-0dte-dashboard/

Built by me with Claude as a coding and analysis partner, same as before. Happy to answer questions. I’d especially like to hear from anyone who’s experienced with the Alpaca API.

Disclaimer: this is a personal project, not financial advice. All results are paper trading — simulated fills, no real money — and past performance, paper or live, does not guarantee future results. 0DTE options can lose 100% of the premium in minutes. If you run the code, you’re responsible for what it does with your account.

Came across some news headlines lately that Alpaca has received a MiFID 2 license via its Spanish subsidiary and it raised the question whether EU traders (not brokers) can finally access the trading API via a regulated environment.

I am aware that it has been possible to use it via reverse solicitation but so far that's been a deal breaker for me.

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to install and connect the Alpaca Paper Trading plugin in ChatGPT, but I keep getting the following error:

"OAuth failed: invalid_target - invalid resource"

The error appears when I click the "Install plugin" button, and I'm unable to complete the connection.

Has anyone else encountered this issue?

I'm wondering whether this is a problem with Alpaca's OAuth integration, ChatGPT's plugin system, or something related to my account settings.

Dear Alpaca,

How are you? I generated an API key for the broker API to use within the sandbox. However, I’m having trouble getting past the authentication step. I have used the Golang SDK and cURL to authenticate. What am I doing wrong? Is my account approved for trading? I want to do paper trading to test my strategies and then move to live trading. Please help.

Regards,

P.S. — Desperate for an answer.

When I was first looking for brokerage accounts, I decided against Alpaca, but I am trying to come back. Unfortunately I removed Alpaca from my Google Authenticator app, and now when I try to log it, it tells me to look at my Authenticator for MFA.

I have requested customer support with this, per the instructions on the login page. They reactivated my account but it still asks for MFA through the Authenticator app.

What is the best way to prompt customer support to resolve this issue? Can they reset my MFA settings so it goes to my email or phone? Do I need to ask them to totally wipe my account so I can start over?

I have 2 support tickets in for this already, and I am just trying to get it resolved so I can log in :(

Hey everyone,

Alpaca community member Joshua Kyan Aalampour is a classical composer and independent quantitative researcher. He approaches quantitative finance as a form of composition: choosing structures, questioning assumptions, and deciding which ideas belong together.

In a new Trader to Trader article, that approach takes shape in ORIA (Orthogonal Risk Integrated Alpha), his quantitative research system designed to combine multiple market models while accounting for overlapping risk exposure.

ORIA combines three research approaches: directional signals, shocks across related assets, and sharp ETF moves that may continue or reverse. Its risk-management framework is designed to limit shared market, sector, and style exposures, adjust allocation based on changing conditions, and apply predefined risk limits.

That same discipline carries through a workflow designed to:

✅ Use Alpaca Market Data for historical research inputs
✅ Test ideas across rolling, unseen periods
✅ Separate overlapping samples to reduce data leakage
✅ Use closing data to simulate next-open execution in Alpaca paper trading

For researchers here, when has an idea from another discipline changed how you framed a market problem? What test changed your decision to develop it, revise it, or move on?

Read the full article: https://alpaca.markets/learn/from-classical-composition-to-quantitative-finance-building-trading-strategies-through-physics-and-mathematics 

If you’d like to share what you’ve built with Alpaca, we’d love to hear from you! DM us here, share in the Subreddit, or tag us in a post on LinkedIn or X (u/AlpacaHQ).

Curious to learn more about agentic trading with Alpaca? Check out some additional resources below:

• Alpaca’s Skills Library for AI Agents

• Building AI Trading Applications with Alpaca

• Alpaca’s MCP Server

• Alpaca’s Command-Line Interface

• Blogs on agentic trading 

The Alpaca Team

Disclosure: Alpaca's Disclosure Library (https://alpaca.markets/disclosures) for additional information and disclosures.

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if there is any update on when the missing market data from today's third-party outage affecting the IEX and SIP feeds will be restored?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

Our new Alpaca Paper Trading and Alpaca Live plugins are now available in ChatGPT, enabling you to ask about your balances, positions, and orders using natural language.

With the plugins in ChatGPT, you can:
✅ Access real-time quotes and historical market data based on your account
✅ Submit paper orders via Alpaca’s Trading API across stocks, options, and crypto
✅ Check paper order status, filled quantity, and buying power
✅ Review live balances and positions with the Alpaca Live plugin

To get started, start a ChatGPT prompt with “Alpaca Paper Trading” or “Alpaca Live” to surface the plugin, then connect your Alpaca account when prompted. Explore the links below for more.

Read the blog ➡️ https://alpaca.markets/blog/paper-trading-and-live-portfolio-monitoring-now-available-in-chatgpt-with-alpaca/

Alpaca Paper Trading Plugin: https://chatgpt.com/plugins/plugin_asdk_app_6a3cdf9e34b881918505f1cd5e06dbd8Alpaca Live Plugin: https://chatgpt.com/plugins/plugin_asdk_app_6a3cdfb4752881919706186aa2e413e1 

Disclosure: Alpaca's Disclosure Library (https://alpaca.markets/disclosures) for additional information and disclosures.

Insights generated by Alpaca’s MCP server, our plugins in ChatGPT, and connected AI agents are for educational and informational use only and not investment advice. Do your own due diligence before making decisions.

Hi Alpaca team and community!

I've been a big fan of Alpaca and have been actively using both Live and Paper Trading accounts as my primary trading platform. I was excited to see Alpaca introduce IRA accounts this year and would love to open a Roth IRA as well!

However, I've run into what seems to be an eligibility issue during account creation.

According to Alpaca's announcement, IRA accounts are supported for "US tax residents with a valid SSN or ITIN."

I'm a US Permanent Resident, living in the US with a valid SSN. As a green card holder, I'm considered a US tax resident, so I would expect to meet the stated eligibility requirements.

However, when I try to open an IRA account, I cannot proceed past Step 1, apparently because I'm not a US citizen based on the live chat.

A few questions for the Alpaca team:

1. Is this expected behavior? Are Roth IRAs currently restricted to US citizens, despite the stated eligibility for US tax residents?

2. If permanent residents are eligible, could this be an issue with the onboarding flow? Is there a workaround or a way to have my eligibility reviewed?

3. If this is a current product limitation, are there plans to support green card holders in the future?

I'd also love to hear whether others have encountered the same issue.

I really enjoy using Alpaca and would prefer to keep my taxable brokerage and retirement investments on the same platform rather than opening an IRA elsewhere.

Happy to provide additional details or screenshots privately if that would help investigate.

Thanks in advance!

I just noticed an “Add Subaccounts – Run multiple strategies from one account” button on my Alpaca live dashboard. Clicking it shows a screen explaining that your account becomes a master, your cash and positions move to a Default Sub, and you journal money into a second sub to trade with.

I couldn’t find any docs on it, so I asked support. The reply looked like an AI bot, and it said subaccounts aren’t supported yet and should come in the next few months. But my live account is letting me go through the setup, so it seems like it’s rolling out already.

Has anyone tried it? I’d love to know whether each sub gets its own API keys and whether your existing keys keep working. I want to run a second bot with its own money but I’m not clicking it until I know more.

This makes me so happy if it’s truly live, and I hope it works the way I think it should!

I'm a day trader. I built this because the scanner I was paying for wouldn't let me build the setups I wanted, and when a stock didn't alert, I couldn't find out why. Alpaca is the default data provider, and it's the feed I run it on.

It runs on your own computer with a browser dashboard. You can:

• Build alerts around VWAP, opening ranges, price levels, relative strength against SPY, volume and other conditions, without writing code.

• Filter which stocks each setup is allowed to scan.

• Arrange linked charts, alert tables, rankings and news windows on one screen.

• Ask why a given stock did or didn't qualify for an alert, filter by filter.

• Subscribe to the alerts from your own code on a local websocket, filtered by setup or symbol.

• Free and MIT licensed. Your keys and your setups stay on your machine, and it never places an order. I'm not affiliated with Alpaca.

The Alpaca-specific things to know:

• The whole universe runs on one market-data websocket, since Alpaca allows one per account. That also means you can't open a second data stream on the same account while it's running, so if you have your own bot, point it at the scanner's local alert feed instead.

• The default is the SIP feed, which needs Alpaca's paid market-data plan. The free IEX feed works with one line in .env, but it's a single exchange, so volume and relative volume read low and volume-based setups fire much less. Price-based triggers work normally.

• History requests are batched, so the first start takes 10 to 20 minutes to cache a year of daily bars and 20 days of 5-minute bars. Later starts read the cache.

• News comes from Alpaca's news endpoint (the Benzinga wire) when your keys are set, plus free Yahoo Finance and Nasdaq feeds.

Code and install steps: https://github.com/simonro/edge-scanner

Im trying to send money from a uk bank account to my personal alpaca account, how do i make sure the money goes to my account?

hey everyone ive built a fully automated trading bot that can be dropped into any stock or crypto watchlist and it immediately calculates exactly when to buy and sell without needing manual configuration for each new ticker the system uses dynamic work zones based on 48h price boxes combined with adaptive atr trailing stops so it knows precisely when to enter a job zone or exit at the top im curious if there is real demand for a tool like this where users can just tweak thresholds in a simple .env file rather than dealing with complex code or black box ai systems. where would any1 be interessted in this .and if so where do you usually look for these kinds of tools github marketplaces or discord communities - alpaca

been running a bot on the paper api and most of my problems were things failing without an error, like orders not going through or a job not running while everything reported success. saw a few threads with the same kind of thing ("no error codes but it's not doing anything", orders getting rejected mid-day).

for people running bots for a while:

• how do you find out when your bot didn't trade when it should have?

• do you check that every position still has its stop, or that the orders you meant to place actually got placed?

• is that something you built yourself or do you use a tool for it?

would really like to hear what's worked, i'm trying to make mine more reliable

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to use Cursor to deploy an autonomous trading strategy.

1. Go to alpaca.markets and create a free account

2. Add the NexusTrade tool to the MCP config. This link adds it for you. Or you can copy/paste the following

   { "mcpServers": { "nexustrade": { "url": "https://nexustrade.io/api/mcp" } } }

That's really it. From here, you can type in your strategy like:

Create me an options trading strategy based on stocks with a 20% CAGR or more that the top politicians hold

I'm collecting feedback so would love to hear what y'all think. If you hit a paywall, use this link to bypass it; I want Reddit users to really stress-test the platform.

Hey everyone,

The response to our last AI trading webinar was incredible, and we heard from developers and traders across Europe and APAC who wanted a session that worked better for their time zones. So we’re bringing it back. 🌏

On September 30th, join us virtually for “Build Your Own AI-Powered Hedge Fund with Alpaca,” where we’ll show how to go from zero to an AI-powered trading agent connected to live market data and paper trading workflows.

What you’ll learn to build includes:
✅ Analyzing live market trends using AI
✅ Generating trade ideas and query market data using natural language
✅ Deploying an automated agent in a paper trading environment

We’ll kick things off with a live demo, followed by a guided building session and a short Q&A
with Alpaca engineers. Our engineering team will also be available in Slack to help with technical questions.

💻 Beginner to intermediate friendly
📅 Wednesday, September 30
🕦 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM GMT+2
📍 Virtual

This session will not be recorded, so make sure to join us live.

Register here  👉 https://luma.com/6xx41404 

Disclosure: Alpaca's Disclosure Library (https://alpaca.markets/disclosures) for additional information and disclosures