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newbie ordering questions
Jason Pul
posted Jun 14, 2016

Hi everyone. I am relatively new to quant and trading. Two questions came up while working on my first algorithm. Thanks for any replays in advance!:

  1. Lets say your current portfolio is completely invested in stock A. During your rebalance routine, you order_target_percent 0.25 in stock B. Now your portfolio has 75% and 25% in stock A and B respectively. Now during that same rebalance routine, you order_target_percent 0.30 in stock C. Ultimately, you intend for 45%, 25% and 30% in stock A, B, and C respectively. But, how do you insure the second order_target_percent exchanges A for C and not B for C? My current code runs order_target_percent in a for loop over a list of stocks. I wipe out my portfolio before the loop every time because I'm not sure which stocks the function targets when trying to meet the requested percent.

  2. If I have $100k in cash and I short $25k in stocks, can I now go long on $125k worth of stocks?

4 responses
Jamie McCorriston
Jun 14, 2016

Hi Jason,

If your portfolio is 100% in stock A and then you order_target_percent 0.25 in stock B, you will end up with 100% stock A and 25% stock B (adds up to 125%) and you will then be borrowing money. On Quantopian, there's no limit to the amount of money that an algo can invest, so if you want to constrain it to only invest the starting capital, you will have to manage your orders.

Have you gone through the Getting Started Tutorial yet? It should be able to help you out. In particular, lesson 10 covers order management.

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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.

Jason Pul
Jun 15, 2016

No I haven't. Thanks for the reply and the link. I'll take a look. Does it cover my second question as well?

Jamie McCorriston
Jun 15, 2016

Yes, on Quantopian, there's no limit to the amount of money that an algo can invest. Your algorithm will spend as much money as you tell it to, which is why you have to manage your orders carefully! More on that in the same lesson.

Jamie McCorriston
Jun 15, 2016

More generally, in your example, it doesn't matter that you went short $25K, you can go long on the $125K either way. However, if you switch to real money trading, it will depend on what your account setup is like with your broker.

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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.