alpacar

Algorithmic stock trading with Alpaca's Stock Trading API.

Note

Alpaca offers both paper and live market APIs. At the current time, {alpacar} is designed for use with Alpaca's paper (simulated) trading API.

Installation

You can install the released version of {alpacar} from Github with:

remotes::install_github("mkearney/alpacar")

Authorization

To get this to work, you'll need to create an app on Alpaca, activate your credentials for the paper trading API, and store as environment variables ALPACA_CLIENT_ID and ALPACA_CLIENT_SECRET. You can set these variables in your ~/.Renviron file by replacing the string values and running the following code:

## this isn't a real client id–replace with yours
tfse::set_renv(ALPACA_CLIENT_ID = "as879f62asf8sdy7fysad")

## this isn't a real client secret–replace with yours
tfse::set_renv(ALPACA_CLIENT_SECRET = "as879f62asf8sdy7fysada9sfd87sdaf9a87sd")

Endpoints

Account

Get information about your account–e.g., buying power, cash, equity, long/short market value, daytrade count, etc.

alpacar::alpaca_account()

Positions

Get information about your current positions–e.g., symbol, quantity, side (long vs. short), profit/loss, etc.

alpacar::alpaca_positions()

Orders

Place new orders–e.g., create short or long position–and specify various options–e.g., market or limit buys, stop loss, etc.

## purchase long position on TWTR stock
alpacar::alpaca_orders(
  symbol = "TWTR",
  qty = 10,
  side = "buy",
  type = "market"
)

## purchase short position on FB stock
alpacar::alpaca_orders(
  symbol = "FB",
  qty = 10,
  side = "sell",
  type = "market"
)