Quick Start Guide
Get your first algorithmic trading strategy running in under 5 minutes.
Quick Start Guide
Get your first algorithmic trading strategy running in under 5 minutes. Choose the path that fits your style.
Path A: Copy a Strategy from the Library
The fastest way to get started. The Strategy Library contains pre-built, backtested strategies you can deploy immediately.
- Navigate to Library in the top navigation bar.
- Browse strategies by category (Long Term, Active Trading, Leveraged, etc.) or search for a specific asset.
- Click on a strategy card to see its backtest performance, including Sharpe ratio, max drawdown, and total return.
- Click "Save to Portfolio" to add it to your account.
- From your portfolio dashboard, click "Launch to Market" to begin paper trading.
Tip: Paper trading simulates real market conditions without risking real money. It's the perfect way to validate a strategy before going live.
Path B: Let Aurora Build Your Strategy
Aurora is NexusTrade's autonomous AI agent — the world's only publicly-available AI that can autonomously research, create, backtest, optimize, and deploy algorithmic trading strategies. Open Aurora and describe what you want in plain English. There's no mode to pick: Aurora automatically decides, per message, whether to answer directly or run a full multi-step agent.
- Type your trading idea. For example:
"Create a portfolio that buys $500 of SPY every two weeks""Build an SMA crossover strategy for NVIDIA using 50-day and 200-day moving averages"
- A request like this resolves in one step, so Aurora generates the portfolio with strategies, conditions, and indicators right away. Click "View Portfolio" to review.
- Tell Aurora to "backtest this portfolio from January 2020 to today" and review the results.
- Save the portfolio and deploy it for paper trading.
For complex, multi-step goals
If your request needs several dependent steps — research, then build, then backtest, then optimize — Aurora recognizes that automatically and escalates into full agent execution: it plans a sequence of actions, executes them, observes the results, and adjusts its approach using the ReAct framework. For example:
"Create a strategy that rebalances between UPRO and GLD. Figure out the best allocation split and rebalancing frequency.""Find the best dividend stocks, build a diversified portfolio, and compare it against SPY"
Aurora creates a plan, then autonomously executes it — creating portfolios, running backtests, comparing results, and even spawning parallel subagents to explore different approaches simultaneously. Review the final results and deploy the best strategy.
Tip: Aurora understands natural language. You can ask follow-up questions like "What if we use a 100-day SMA instead?" and Aurora will adjust the strategy accordingly. For the full guide on how Aurora's routing, automation settings, and subagents work, see Aurora AI Agent.
Path C: Build Your Own Strategy Manually
For maximum control, build a strategy from scratch using the no-code UI.
- Navigate to Portfolios and click "Create Portfolio".
- Give your portfolio a name and set an initial cash amount (e.g., $25,000 for equities; use much larger starting capital for options—see Options trading).
- Click "Add Strategy" and configure:
- Action: Buy, Sell, Alert, Rebalance, Launch Agent, OpenOption, or CloseOption
- Asset and amount: What to trade and how much
- Conditions: When to execute (e.g., "RSI of AAPL is below 30")
- Run a backtest to evaluate performance over historical data.
- Optionally, use the Optimizer to fine-tune parameters with genetic algorithms.
- Click "Launch to Market" to deploy.
For a deeper understanding of how strategies, conditions, and indicators work together, see Core Concepts.
What's Next?
Once you have a paper-trading portfolio running, here are your next steps: