Alpaca is a full-service API-first brokerage. API-first means they don’t provide a featureful client for users. Portfolio123 would make the perfect client!
Importantly, they offer superior margin rates to Tradier and much lower fees than Interactive Brokers. (I’m not affiliated with Alpaca in any way.)
I’ve been trading online since the '90s and have traded at the following brokerages: Datek->Ameritrade->TD Ameritrade, Etrade, Schwab, Interactive Brokers, Robinhood, Webull, Folio Investing, Motif Investing, and M1 Finance. I’ve also created accounts (but not traded) on a number of other systems.
I’ve been following Alpaca’s progress for over a year. I built an Electron (javascript) app to make trades with their paper trading facility. I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen (API, documentation, overall direction).
View the feature request here.
Carl I saw your email as well. I did look at Alpaca a while back, and liked everything until I saw that they don’t have retirement accounts. I was just waiting for them to add them before trying to connect. But no sense in waiting (most of my money is in a cash account anyway).
How is their breadth? Can you buy small cap and micro caps ? It’s kind of a big deal since lots use P123 to target smaller stocks overlooked by pros. Nobody beats Fidelity in breadth, but we have not been able to get their attention to get their API documentation.
We should be able to easily interface with any broker . After all it’s all basically the same thing : buy /sell / account balances. And these naked brokers are perfect partners bc they offer nothing on their website for the user. Nor should they. Most broker tools are terrible and never get updated once implemented. It’s all cookie cutter. Want proof just look at the success Robinhood had with basically nothing.
I’ll shoot you an email too so we can chat ? Thanks
Hi Marco- thanks for your reply. I did test their breadth a bit on some ADRs and biotech microcaps that aren’t tradeable on M1 or Robinhood. They have all the tickers I want to trade, but obviously this was not a comprehensive test. (Actually they didn’t have one ticker, so I wrote to their support about it. I got a reply in less than 30 minutes: just a couple days prior, the company in question underwent a 7:1 reverse split and ticker change, and the new ticker was tradeable. So I was the one out to lunch on that one. Anyway, I came away impressed. Even established brokers sometimes drag their feet on corporate actions with these smaller stocks.)
Regarding retirement accounts: Alas, my wife and I are both in tech and our savings comes mostly from IPO windfalls. Because of the structure of those, they were taxed as income and considered income for purposes of making us unable to contribute to retirement accounts. So unfortunately it’s not an issue for me with Alpaca! :0
Definitely agreed on the poor state of broker portfolio management and performance tracking tools. Portfolio123 is the interface I wish all brokers had.
Definitely shoot me an e-mail. Would love to help in any way I can. -Carl