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Need advise from live traders please.
Deleted User
posted Mar 8, 2017
Seeking Help

I want to live trade one of my long short algorithms using IB sub account and Quantopian. As I understand I would need a margin account because I rebalance portfolio everyday. I have never live traded and have tons of questions but following two are of immediate concern.

  1. Has anyone tried live algorithms with short positions on IB? What are the pitfalls? Is it always possible to short?
  2. What is the maximum capital that can be deployed on quantopian+IB? I am looking at 10 to 20 million (not my money).

Please advise.

2 responses
Joseph Everly
Mar 8, 2017

I attempted to live trade stocks that were highly volatile (and weren't necessarily part of the Q500US or Q1500US), and there were several that IB rejected because they didn't have shares available for borrowing. That algo really didn't work and I abandoned it pretty quickly, but I did learn a fair bit. I am now trading a long-only algorithm that just deals with the Q500US and actual results are very close to how the backtests turn out.

My advice would be that if you are going to trade a large amount of money like that, even if it isn't yours, start with a small number like $100k (small in relation to 10 million) and trade that for a month or two. You will surely learn a lot.

Simon Thornington
Mar 16, 2017

Yeah, shorts are usually no problem for liquid names. You can check their short locates tool on the website, or the short locates & rates tool in Mosaic. They do charge you, of course.

I think you'd need to talk to Quantopian about doing that much through their system; last year, I think they had some limit around $250k just for risk control, but I am fairly certain they can just bump it up if you ask them to.

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