stock

What this is

A day-trading research desk for stocks and options. It reads market data, turns technical indicators into directional signals, and (optionally) places trades on your Alpaca account — paper money first, with hard risk guards. You can test strategies on years of history and run hands-off campaigns that trade and manage exits for you.

Get started in 4 steps

1. Look around the Dashboard. It shows your (paper) account value, market status, open positions, trade ideas, and your recorded performance vs buy-and-hold.
2. Test a strategy first. Go to Testing → set Instrument: Stocks (real prices) → Run backtest. See whether it would have made money. Then try Compare strategies and Walk-forward to check it honestly.
3. Try it hands-off in Dry-run. Open Guided Setup, answer a few questions, keep Mode = Dry-run, and Build my plan → Start. Watch the Run Loop page — it shows what it would trade, placing nothing.
4. Go live only when ready. Switch Mode to Live (still paper money) to actually place orders. Stop anytime from the Run Loop page.

How it works

data  →  signals  →  trade  →  manage exits

• Signals — 9 strategies each say LONG SHORT or FLAT; a majority vote combines them (ties → FLAT).
• Trade — Stocks: LONG buys shares, SHORT sells short. Options: LONG buys a call, SHORT buys a put (contract picked by delta), then risk-checked.
• Manage — automatic stop-loss / take-profit, manual or one-tap close, or a hands-off run loop.

The pages

Dashboard — account, market, positions, ideas, and your recorded performance vs buy-and-hold.
Guided Setup — answer a few questions; it sizes positions, sets stop/target, and starts a campaign (stocks or options).
Signals — read-only; what the strategies say right now.
Trade — preview the exact stock/contract it would trade; flip to live to place a paper order.
Positions — what you hold, live P&L, and one-tap close.
Run Loop — hands-off campaigns. Run up to 6 at once (a different symbol/instrument each), each with its own Stop.
Testing — the research suite: backtest on real history, Compare strategies, Walk-forward (overfit check) and Scan watchlist (many symbols) — with profit factor, expectancy and a beats buy-and-hold verdict. Stocks use real prices; options are modeled (and disabled unless real option data is connected).
Backtest / Sweep — quick single-strategy checks; sweep ranks strategy × delta combos.
Settings — email alerts, the daily summary, and data providers (Alpaca, Polygon, Massive…).
Journal — every order, recorded.

The 9 strategies

• EMA crossover — trend: long when the fast average leads the slow.
• RSI reversion — buys oversold, sells overbought.
• VWAP trend — long above the day's volume-weighted average price, short below.
• Opening-range breakout — trades breaks of the session's first range (intraday).
• MACD momentum — long when momentum turns up.
• Bollinger reversion — fades moves that push outside the bands.
• ROC momentum — follows the recent rate of change.
• Donchian breakout — trades breaks of the N-bar high/low channel.
• SMA trend — long above the slow moving average, short below.

Glossary

• Stock vs Option — a stock is a share of the company; an option is a leveraged, expiring bet on its direction.
• Long / Short — long profits if it rises; short profits if it falls.
• Call / Put — a call wins if the stock rises; a put if it falls.
• Delta — how much an option moves per $1 of stock. ~0.5 ≈ at-the-money.
• Dry-run vs Live — dry-run shows everything but places nothing; live actually trades (paper money).
• Stop / Target — auto-close levels on a position's profit/loss.
• Profit factor — gross wins ÷ gross losses; above 1.0 means a net winner.
• Buy-and-hold — the benchmark: what you'd make just holding the stock. Beating it is the bar.
• Limit order — caps the price you'll pay (vs a market order that takes whatever's offered).

Safety

• Dry-run is the default; live trading needs a server setting plus a typed confirmation.
• Risk checks (cost, notional, position count, daily-loss, trades/day) gate every order.
• Run Loop has a kill switch (touch KILL) and a per-campaign Stop; up to 6 campaigns, never two on the same symbol+instrument.
• Modeled-option features are disabled without real option data, so you never see misleading numbers.

Suggestions & best practices

• Always start in Dry-run. Watch a few passes on the Run Loop page and confirm the contracts and P&L look sane before risking anything.
• Let the suggester pick the symbol. In Guided Setup, “Suggest a symbol” ranks liquid names by how strongly the strategies agree right now.
• Keep targets realistic. A few percent a day is already ambitious for options; chasing 10%+/day mostly produces big swings and losses. The wizard floors/caps your take-profit so it actually triggers intraday.
• Trade liquid names. Stick to tight-spread underlyings (AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, SPY…) so you’re not paying a wide bid/ask.
• Size small. Risk a slice of capital per position — the wizard caps total exposure to what you allocate.
• Read the news. The Dashboard and Signals show recent headlines; a signal that fights a major news catalyst deserves a second look.
• Respect the exits. Stop-loss / take-profit and the daily-loss cap protect you — don’t turn them off.
• Tap any “?” icon anywhere in the app for a plain-English definition of a term.

What works / what’s pending

Working now (on a paper account):

• 9 strategies + the ensemble, on real-time (Alpaca IEX) and delayed (yfinance) data.
• Stock backtesting (real prices) and live stock trading; live options trading (real paper fills, risk-gated and journaled).
• The full research suite — Compare strategies, Walk-forward, Scan watchlist, decision metrics, and the buy-and-hold benchmark.
• Up to 6 concurrent campaigns with auto-resume, email alerts + a daily summary, and the order journal.

Pending / limited:

• Option backtests & spreads need real option data — Alpaca’s OPRA agreement, or a Polygon/Massive key in Settings. They’re off with a warning until connected.
• Live fills only during market hours.
• Real-money trading is off by default — it needs a server setting plus a typed confirmation.
• No proven edge. Comprehensive testing shows these strategies trail just holding the stock — this is a research and learning scaffold, used honestly.