Ten years ago, algorithmic trading was reserved
for the elite.
Even backtesting a strategy (testing a set of
trading rules on historical data) took a
ridiculous amount of time and energy.
Just to get started, you HAD to know…
-
Python or
another programming language to code up your
algorithm
-
Knowledge of statistics
to understand how well your algorithm
performed
-
Proficiency with APIs
to fetch the data needed for your algorithms
-
Expert knowledge of databases to store the financial data and the signals
that your algorithms generated
And this doesn’t touch upon the skills needed
for other aspects of algorithmic trading, such
as trading strategy optimization or deployment.
But now, there is an easy way for you to deploy
your first algorithmic trading strategy. And the
best part is, you don’t have to write a single
line of code.
Here’s how.
Step 1: Create an account on NexusTrade
The very first step is to create an account with
NexusTrade.
NexusTrade is an AI-Powered automated investing
platform. It makes it easy for anybody, even
beginners and non-technical people, to create,
test, optimize, and deploy algorithmic trading
strategies.
Once we have an account, we will be redirected
to the
Dashboard
page.
The dashboard page you will see after
creating a NexusTrade account
From here, we will click “Live Trading” and proceed to Step 2.
Step 2) Connect our Alpaca account
Alpaca is a commission-free brokerage platform
that allows users to trade stocks,
cryptocurrencies, and ETFs via an easy-to-use
API. In order to execute real trades, we rely on
Alpaca.
The Live Trading Page to connect our Alpaca
account
So thus, our next step is to connect our Alpaca
account to our NexusTrade account. If we don’t
have an Alpaca account, the app will guide us
step-by-step on how to create one.
Once we click “Connect with Alpaca”, an
important disclaimer will pop-up. Read through
it carefully, and once you understand and agree
to the terms, sign it as follows:
The Disclaimer that we must sign in order to
use live-trading
Once we click “I understand & Accept”, we
will be directed to the Alpaca website. From
here, we must sign up or create an account, but
it’s very straightforward to do so.
After creating an account, we will see this
message to authorize use of NexusTrade.
Alpaca’s Authorization of use for NexusTrade
Click “Allow”, and when we’re done, we’ll be
redirected back to NexusTrade!
Finally, our Alpaca account is connected with
our NexusTrade account. It’s time to deploy our
very first trading strategy!
Step 3) Creating our algorithmic trading
strategy
I’ve written literally hundreds of articles on
my
Medium
about how to create trading strategies with
NexusTrade. You can do so using the
AI Chat, which converts your plain English words into
a strategy, or you can do the easy-to-use
no-code UI.
However, there’s also a third option that we
will use for this article: the
strategy library.
We can navigate to the strategy library from
the header
The strategy library is a collection of
pre-configured trading strategies I made to
lower the barrier of entry and make it easy for
anybody to get started deploying algorithmic
trading strategies.
It features strategies like buying FAANG stocks,
buying and holding ETFs, leveraged strategies,
and more. With just a few clicks, users can
explore and deploy proven approaches tailored
for different risk appetites and goals.
For this example, we’ll use the popular
dollar-cost averaging strategy, a time-tested method for consistent
investing.
The dollar cost averaging strategy in the
library
The dollar cost average strategy involves
investing a fixed amount of money at regular
intervals. It is designed to reduce the impact
of market risk and provide a stable, long-term
approach to investing.
Once we click the strategy, we’ll see a more
detailed view.
Detailed view of the dollar cost average
strategy
From here, we can decide if we want to create a
new portfolio with these rules or if we want to
add it to an existing portfolio. In this
walkthrough, we’ll add it to our Alpaca,
live-trading Portfolio.
Adding the portfolio to our Alpaca Portfolio
We’ll click submit, and
voila! We’ll be instantly
navigated to our new algorithmic trading
strategy.
Finally, Let’s Deploy our Strategy to the Live
Market
Our new Alpaca Portfolio with trading
strategies
From the Portfolio Page, we’ll click “Launch to
Market”. This will open up a modal titled,
“Deployment Center”.
The Deployment Center lets us deploy our
strategies
The Deployment Center allows us to deploy our
portfolio. We have some options to configure,
such as the Deployment Frequency.
The deployment frequency dictates how often we
want our strategies to run. The options are:
-
Open-Close Deployment: Our strategies will run once at open and
once at close. This more closely mimics the
backtests (although intraday backtests are
coming soon!)
-
Constant Deployment: Our strategies will run constantly thoughout
the day.
In this example, I’ll stay with the default
(open-close deployment). We’ll click “Start Trading” and “Save”, and then our portfolio will be
deployed to the cloud!
Once deployed, the strategies that we created
will be continuously checked. If any of our
strategy’s conditions are true, it will send us
a notification to review our order.
Trading notification that we get
At the same time, we’ll get an in-app
notification, forcing us to review our order.
If we decide to execute our trade, we’ll click
“Confirm Order”. This will send a real order to
Alpaca.
Reviewing an order in NexusTrade
Concluding Thoughts
Five years ago, doing something like this just
wasn’t possible. Algorithmic trading required
technical expertise, knowledge in finance, and
coding skills. Now, we just require a computer.
This is game-changer. To recap, we connected our
Alpaca account to NexusTrade, and then created
and deployed our first algorithmic trading
strategy.
Now in reality, we’d probably do much more. For
example, we’d probably want to create our own
trading strategy using Aurora, and define custom
conditions and indicators.
TQQQ Trading Strategy created with the AI
Chat
But the process is still 1000x easier than
before. We can effortlessly test ideas, perform
financial research, and deploy real algorithmic
trading strategies to the market.
And once you experience the power of algorithmic
trading, you’ll NEVER go back.
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