Multiple issues with Quantopian live trading robustness (Robinhood)

Quantopian's community platform is shutting down. Please read this post for more information and download your code.

Back to Community

Multiple issues with Quantopian live trading robustness (Robinhood)

posted Jan 2, 2017

1) My Algo will have to reconnect to Robinhood probably between 1-4 times a week, randomly, Seems worse lately. I have to log into Quantopian every day each morning before market open to check that the connection is still working because it's bitten me one too many times. Has anyone else experienced this?

2) After trading for a few months with no errors with an Algo, I got a "Timeout: 300 seconds
There was a runtime error on line 144." error. Line 144 is
context.output = pipeline_output('my_pipeline') It just so happens that this error occurred on 12/27/16 at 9:06am (before trading starts function) after the market holiday on 12/26/16. Is it a known bug that pipeline fails after a market holiday? I have no date-specific code in my algo, It's just normal scheduled functions and a normal pipeline call. I'm not expecting this is something that has a work-around but it doesn't seem very robust. I'm worried about market open on 1/3/2017

3) There is no way to update my code during live trading without stopping and starting the algo again. After an error it's faster to stop/start it again then wait for support to resume it. This would not be such a big deal if there was an option for return graphs or "global" context.variables actually carried over from one iteration to the next. This was once a minor "want" but given the other problems I find myself really needing some continuity. Can't you make it so that if you click live-trade on any backtest with the same algo ID it will start livetrading where the old one left off?

Overall it's enough problems to give me pause about using Quantopian for real money trading, but I have no choice since they are lightyears ahead of their competition feature-wise. Lots of users are running backtests over multi-year time spans so I'm sure the expectation is there that they will be able to turn on a live algorithm one day and see it still going steady in a year or two. Frankly it's exhausting to think about hand holding my algorithm every day for a few more months, let alone 10 years only to see no graphs of it's returns, alpha, sharpe, drawdowns, trade history, etc. because somewhere along the line I decided I wanted to update it or a random glitch happened after a holiday.

You've successfully submitted a support ticket.

Our support team will be in touch soon.

Need help? Contact support.

The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian.

In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.

About Quantopian

The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian.

In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.