You got here so you should have heard about about algorithmic trading. That’s the first and probably the most important step, well done. Let’s dive into what it take to algo-trade with TD Ameritrade.
The 1st thing you’ll need is a TD Ameritrade account. You don’t need to be a US citizen to get an account, and the process is pretty easy. Here are a few examples: Albania, Bahamas, Canada, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Thailand, United Kingdom, Vatican City. You can find more at their website.
The 2nd thing you need is to fund your account. $25,000 is still requirement to day trade actively in the USA. You may want to have at least slightly more in case there are any interim losses.
The 3rd thing you need is a Breaking Equity Algo Lab account. If you do not yet have one signup here.
Linking TD Account to Breaking Equity
Once you have an account go to https://app.breakingequity.com/#/profile/3 and link your TD account by simply singing into it. That’s it, you now ready to algo-trade with TD Ameritrade.
TD does Not Offer Algo Paper Trading but We Got You Covered
TD Ameritrade has a world class demo trading platform, PaperMoney. It’s one of the best paper trading platform out there. The bad news is that it’s not available for algo-trading. TD does not provide any guidance if they intend to make it work or no but we got you covered. Breaking Equity has paper trading engine that works without dependency on any broker integration.
You may want to check our article about the importance of backtest and paper trading in the blog section.
Where Do I Get the Algos?
There are a couple of good places. Check out twitter account for the backtested strategies and examples. You can also navigate to https://app.breakingequity.com/#/dashboard and pick one of the examples there. Finally you can create a new one with Breaking Equity Algo Lab. Backtest, paper trade and trade live with TD all within the same web interface.
Always remember that great reward comes with great risk. Loses are unavoidable but if you manage the risk you can make your account grow via compound effect. Good luck in your algo-trading journey.
