11 ms·

Show HN: Stock Trading from Google Spreadsheet

281 points by umitanuki 8y ago

I've shared copy-able G sheet with full script that calls stock trading API. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RLvSmDEfS7U2OrqlUYvv_8KpHJ15tzACK_JvmRYXm1k/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RLvSmDEfS7U2OrqlUYvv... I'm sure many of you guys do some trick over stocks in spreadsheet. Full explanation: https://medium.com/automation-generation/manage-your-stocks-from-google-spreadsheet-using-api-43026db44289 https://medium.com/automation-generation/manage-your-stocks-...

cpr 8y ago
Nifty! What’s the catch? ;-)
ykevinator 8y ago
I can't believe I've never heard of alpaca before.
- hellofunk 8y ago
  Looks like the press release was only a few weeks ago. I wish they provided some way to access historical data, however. I struggle to find accessible and inexpensive histories.
  - umitanuki 8y ago
    You will access to the historical data. https://docs.alpaca.markets/web-api/market-data/ https://docs.alpaca.markets/web-api/market-data/ working to cover more
- swalsh 8y ago
  It looks super interesting, but it's unclear to me if you can buy/sell options.
- dmos62 8y ago
  Alapaca's business model [0]: > Alpaca will start offering Premium Plan subscriptions, where premium users will have access to various perks, such as higher quality live data feed and more computing resources. The pricing and exact features have not yet been determined. Please stay tuned for updates. [0] https://support.alpaca.markets/hc/en-us/articles/360011047171-Business-Model https://support.alpaca.markets/hc/en-us/articles/36001104717...
DailyHN 8y ago
I don't think many people realize the flexibility of Google Sheets + Scripts. When I need an ad-hoc flexible internal tool, Google sheets is usually the first place I start building.
- giarc 8y ago
  I'm actually building a product right now that will live entirely on Google Sheets.
  - DailyHN 8y ago
    Awesome, can you tell us more? I'm building out "Idea Meritocracy" tools like those found in Principles(Dalio). The Google Forms integration is really powerful for mobile input. And event triggers are great for managing what's inputted to the form.
    - giarc 8y ago
      Should be ready for beta release very shortly. Focus is on improving communications between small businesses and their customers. I thought about building out a standalone web app, but Google Sheets was easy enough for a MVP. Spreadsheets are generally well known and familiar enough for small business owners/operators to use so it could always live as a sheet. There are a few competitors right now, but they lack a certain feature that I think is important. Can share more when ready... aka when I've purchased the domain name so it doesn't get squatted.
      - DailyHN 8y ago
        So it's a CRM? Or a single CRM feature? Does it use any proprietary or other APIs outside of the sheets scripts? Ping me when it's ready for beta testers Brian at angularjobs.com
        giarc 8y ago
        No not a CRM. It's likely a feature in many CRMs though. It uses an outside API and that's a big change from existing solutions. Sorry for being cryptic, but if I shared the API it would be obvious. I just want to put final touches on it before doing a Show HN. At that point it'll be obvious :)
onion2k 8y ago
There was a really nice example of a Vue app that uses Sheets as an API on Codepen the other day - https://codepen.io/quinlo/pen/eQrRMM https://codepen.io/quinlo/pen/eQrRMM
anonu 8y ago
Trading driven from a spreadsheet brings back horrible memories of my earliest days on Wall Street. Excel was usually hacked in the most grotesque ways: tick data coming in, updating cells and signals and driving actual orders out the other end. Add to the fact that you're running on a desktop computer thats already struggling with a dozen other applications consuming market data, CPU cycles and driving 6 monitors... I was usually called in to debug these things. My approach was always super minimalist... How do I make the 1 change that will get this all back on its feet again? .... without looking at any of the VBA or the weird DLLs lurking in the shadows. Having said all that - Google Sheets is actually a different beast. I still wouldn't trade through it. Also, I've been eyeing Alpaca for a while - I like what they're doing. Best of luck to them....
- projectramo 8y ago
  Edit: before I read the article I wasn't sure if you meant: https://www.alpaca.ai https://www.alpaca.ai or https://alpaca.markets https://alpaca.markets
  - leoplct 8y ago
    Alpaca.markets is great! What are other alternative for personal solution?
    - nycdatasci 8y ago
      Have you looked at Interactive Brokers? They seem to support more complex order types than Alpaca, which can meaningfully impact returns of a automated trading strategy.
      - jason_slack 8y ago
        IB is good if you don’t need them. I’ve asked questions via their website and called them to no avail. That being said they seem solid.
    - TheGrassyKnoll 8y ago
syntaxing 8y ago
Is there a catch to Alpaca? How do they make money?
- conistonwater 8y ago
  Companies like that usually sell the order flow to market makers.
  - mrfredward 8y ago
    Which is a nice way of saying you're in a pool of bait for high frequency traders. ...but that's really not so bad. Having an algorithm skim 2 cents/share off of you is a lot better than paying $5+ per trade (assuming you're not trading 1000s of shares, and you're not in penny stocks or options where spreads are big).
    - conistonwater 8y ago
      It's not a nice way of saying that, the "pool of bait" logic is totally wrong. There's a lot of nonsense written about high frequency trading on the internet, but for example Matt Levine's explanations are completely readable, correct, and on point (see the other comment).
      - SirLJ 8y ago
        There is no free lunch... To paraphrase a friend from high school: "...when you start to play and don't know who the patsy is, usually it's you..." ;-)
      - mrfredward 8y ago
        If someone will pay to trade with you instead of someone else, you're definitely not getting the best price.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    I know Robinhood makes hundreds of millions with this, do you know how large the full market actually is?
foolsgold 8y ago
I worked for one of the largest financials services companies in the world and they STILL use excel to drive their trading activities. They are so large and so complex that it's impossible to convert them because no one completely understands how it all works. They were developed by traders/market experts with no help from IT, for years IT didn't even knew they existed. These spreadsheets are truly amazing, I've only seen glimpses of these spreadsheets but they were massive, nothing like needed to have servers in the local network cabinet and running cables for keyboard, video and mouse, because you needed 1/2 a Tb of ram in order to open the spreadsheet.
- laminar_flow 8y ago
  Also worked for some large financial firms, and can confirm that there is a disconnect between Excel models created by traders and IT. One interesting development was the acquisition of ClearFactr by Goldman [1]. Seems like they hope it will centralize some of these models into one sytem, making them accessible across the firm (Excel sheets can even be imported). GS has had a centralized risk/pricing system for over 20 years now that is pretty powerful [2]. Fun fact: GS was able to calculate their total exposure to the Lehman collapse 12 hours after it happened using this. 1. https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-buy-financial-modeling-startup-2018-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-buy-financial-... 2. https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/276170/secdb-quartz-athena-analytics https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/276170/secdb-quartz...
  - saganus 8y ago
    The SecDB article [2], is very interesting!
  - mruts 8y ago
    I worked at a financial services company that created portfolio analytics software. My job pretty much consisted of turning our analysts' excel models into high performance Scala code. The company wasn't very successful, we just couldn't convince portfolio managers to pay for our software. Even the analysts at hedge funds didn't like to use our software. My theory is that a bunch of analysts need to justify their jobs with incredibly inefficient and error-prone excel workflows. Our software would have eliminated a lot of what they do in a day, and therefore, would eliminate their jobs as well. It is terrifying that trillions of dollars of assets are run on excel, but the inertia is too strong.
rodolfobandeira 8y ago
You can just use Google Finance directly from your Google Spreadsheet. Reference: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093281?hl=en https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093281?hl=en
Down_n_Out 8y ago
Does something like this exist in Europe? Free trading would be a dream. Paying 7,5 EUR to 15 EUR or more for each transaction gets old quick. Free: Or paying a very little amount compared with what is considered the norm.
- throwaway123mmm 8y ago
  Try degiro?
  - lucas03 8y ago
    yep, https://www.degiro.eu/ https://www.degiro.eu/ has ~0,5$ fee on NYSE and NASDAQ
  - Down_n_Out 8y ago
    Thanks, will have a look!
- Havoc 8y ago
  Not free, but Europeans can sign up with interactive brokers UK and the pricing is very good for US markets. >Paying 7,5 EUR to 15 EUR or more for each transaction gets old quick. Even if there was a free service in Europe I'm not sure I'd use it due to concerns about fill & execution quality. Or to use an IT analogy...if you're not paying you are the product. In this case via order flow being sold.
- cfontes 8y ago
  https://stocks.getbux.com/ https://stocks.getbux.com/ we will be launching it next year! Disclaimer: I work at BUX.
  - dig1 8y ago
    Any plans for trading API? I presume you are from Netherlands, what exchanges you'll cover? What are limits to EU vs non-EU residents? EDIT: formatting...
  - Down_n_Out 8y ago
thedangler 8y ago
I wish Alpaca worked for Canadians. There is Questtrade, but comparing the documentation, it isn't as nice to work with.
- umitanuki 8y ago
  We are working hard to support non-US users!
robertsd247 8y ago
Cool. I like useful posts. All posts should be useful. But not all posts are useful. Most are not useful. Now I have lost my faith in humanity. :(
paulcnichols 8y ago
Cool, but first thought was a sarcastic “What could possibly wrong?”
hackerews 8y ago
Smart to have a SUBMIT button. POST requests with Google Sheets is generally a bad idea since you can't explicitly control when they're sent.
blairanderson 8y ago
removing emotion from the actual decision to make equity purchases should be the main priority for products right now. Would be great to see more programs "building your own ETF". - choose your investment theory - set the variables - get monthly/quarterly updates to SELL:X / BUY:Y
jason_slack 8y ago
So many firms still use Excel to drive trades. When I started out I was using GNumeric and still sometimes use it for quick ideas before coding a strategy in c++
lucas03 8y ago
These common excel spreadsheets used by investors are partly why I am writing my web application. It focuses on DGI investing and dividends in general and I have a lot o plans and room for improvements, but e.g. automatic dividend calendar must be 100 times better than keeping track of dividends in google spreadsheet manually :D
- TheGrassyKnoll 8y ago
  DGI == Dividend Growth Investing
nodesocket 8y ago
I'm really curious what a simple algorithm would be? I know that penny stock traders usually operate within the first hour of trading mostly looking for stocks that are poised to gap open on some event looking to catch upward momentum, even if only 1% or 2%. Would be awesome to see how this could be accomplished with the Alpaca API.

281 points by umitanuki 8y ago

cpr 8y ago

Nifty! What’s the catch? ;-)

ykevinator 8y ago

I can't believe I've never heard of alpaca before.

hellofunk 8y ago
Looks like the press release was only a few weeks ago. I wish they provided some way to access historical data, however. I struggle to find accessible and inexpensive histories.
- umitanuki 8y ago
  You will access to the historical data. https://docs.alpaca.markets/web-api/market-data/ https://docs.alpaca.markets/web-api/market-data/ working to cover more
swalsh 8y ago
It looks super interesting, but it's unclear to me if you can buy/sell options.
dmos62 8y ago
Alapaca's business model [0]: > Alpaca will start offering Premium Plan subscriptions, where premium users will have access to various perks, such as higher quality live data feed and more computing resources. The pricing and exact features have not yet been determined. Please stay tuned for updates. [0] https://support.alpaca.markets/hc/en-us/articles/360011047171-Business-Model https://support.alpaca.markets/hc/en-us/articles/36001104717...

DailyHN 8y ago

I don't think many people realize the flexibility of Google Sheets + Scripts. When I need an ad-hoc flexible internal tool, Google sheets is usually the first place I start building.

giarc 8y ago
I'm actually building a product right now that will live entirely on Google Sheets.
- DailyHN 8y ago
  Awesome, can you tell us more? I'm building out "Idea Meritocracy" tools like those found in Principles(Dalio). The Google Forms integration is really powerful for mobile input. And event triggers are great for managing what's inputted to the form.
  - giarc 8y ago
    Should be ready for beta release very shortly. Focus is on improving communications between small businesses and their customers. I thought about building out a standalone web app, but Google Sheets was easy enough for a MVP. Spreadsheets are generally well known and familiar enough for small business owners/operators to use so it could always live as a sheet. There are a few competitors right now, but they lack a certain feature that I think is important. Can share more when ready... aka when I've purchased the domain name so it doesn't get squatted.
    - DailyHN 8y ago
      So it's a CRM? Or a single CRM feature? Does it use any proprietary or other APIs outside of the sheets scripts? Ping me when it's ready for beta testers Brian at angularjobs.com
      - giarc 8y ago
        No not a CRM. It's likely a feature in many CRMs though. It uses an outside API and that's a big change from existing solutions. Sorry for being cryptic, but if I shared the API it would be obvious. I just want to put final touches on it before doing a Show HN. At that point it'll be obvious :)

onion2k 8y ago

There was a really nice example of a Vue app that uses Sheets as an API on Codepen the other day - https://codepen.io/quinlo/pen/eQrRMM https://codepen.io/quinlo/pen/eQrRMM

anonu 8y ago

Trading driven from a spreadsheet brings back horrible memories of my earliest days on Wall Street. Excel was usually hacked in the most grotesque ways: tick data coming in, updating cells and signals and driving actual orders out the other end. Add to the fact that you're running on a desktop computer thats already struggling with a dozen other applications consuming market data, CPU cycles and driving 6 monitors... I was usually called in to debug these things. My approach was always super minimalist... How do I make the 1 change that will get this all back on its feet again? .... without looking at any of the VBA or the weird DLLs lurking in the shadows. Having said all that - Google Sheets is actually a different beast. I still wouldn't trade through it. Also, I've been eyeing Alpaca for a while - I like what they're doing. Best of luck to them....

projectramo 8y ago
Edit: before I read the article I wasn't sure if you meant: https://www.alpaca.ai https://www.alpaca.ai or https://alpaca.markets https://alpaca.markets
- leoplct 8y ago
  Alpaca.markets is great! What are other alternative for personal solution?
  - nycdatasci 8y ago
    Have you looked at Interactive Brokers? They seem to support more complex order types than Alpaca, which can meaningfully impact returns of a automated trading strategy.
    - jason_slack 8y ago
      IB is good if you don’t need them. I’ve asked questions via their website and called them to no avail. That being said they seem solid.
  - TheGrassyKnoll 8y ago

syntaxing 8y ago

Is there a catch to Alpaca? How do they make money?

conistonwater 8y ago
Companies like that usually sell the order flow to market makers.
- mrfredward 8y ago
  Which is a nice way of saying you're in a pool of bait for high frequency traders. ...but that's really not so bad. Having an algorithm skim 2 cents/share off of you is a lot better than paying $5+ per trade (assuming you're not trading 1000s of shares, and you're not in penny stocks or options where spreads are big).
  - conistonwater 8y ago
    It's not a nice way of saying that, the "pool of bait" logic is totally wrong. There's a lot of nonsense written about high frequency trading on the internet, but for example Matt Levine's explanations are completely readable, correct, and on point (see the other comment).
    - SirLJ 8y ago
      There is no free lunch... To paraphrase a friend from high school: "...when you start to play and don't know who the patsy is, usually it's you..." ;-)
    - mrfredward 8y ago
      If someone will pay to trade with you instead of someone else, you're definitely not getting the best price.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  I know Robinhood makes hundreds of millions with this, do you know how large the full market actually is?

foolsgold 8y ago

I worked for one of the largest financials services companies in the world and they STILL use excel to drive their trading activities. They are so large and so complex that it's impossible to convert them because no one completely understands how it all works. They were developed by traders/market experts with no help from IT, for years IT didn't even knew they existed. These spreadsheets are truly amazing, I've only seen glimpses of these spreadsheets but they were massive, nothing like needed to have servers in the local network cabinet and running cables for keyboard, video and mouse, because you needed 1/2 a Tb of ram in order to open the spreadsheet.

laminar_flow 8y ago
Also worked for some large financial firms, and can confirm that there is a disconnect between Excel models created by traders and IT. One interesting development was the acquisition of ClearFactr by Goldman [1]. Seems like they hope it will centralize some of these models into one sytem, making them accessible across the firm (Excel sheets can even be imported). GS has had a centralized risk/pricing system for over 20 years now that is pretty powerful [2]. Fun fact: GS was able to calculate their total exposure to the Lehman collapse 12 hours after it happened using this. 1. https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-buy-financial-modeling-startup-2018-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-buy-financial-... 2. https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/276170/secdb-quartz-athena-analytics https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/276170/secdb-quartz...
- saganus 8y ago
  The SecDB article [2], is very interesting!
- mruts 8y ago
  I worked at a financial services company that created portfolio analytics software. My job pretty much consisted of turning our analysts' excel models into high performance Scala code. The company wasn't very successful, we just couldn't convince portfolio managers to pay for our software. Even the analysts at hedge funds didn't like to use our software. My theory is that a bunch of analysts need to justify their jobs with incredibly inefficient and error-prone excel workflows. Our software would have eliminated a lot of what they do in a day, and therefore, would eliminate their jobs as well. It is terrifying that trillions of dollars of assets are run on excel, but the inertia is too strong.

rodolfobandeira 8y ago

You can just use Google Finance directly from your Google Spreadsheet. Reference: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093281?hl=en https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093281?hl=en

Down_n_Out 8y ago

Does something like this exist in Europe? Free trading would be a dream. Paying 7,5 EUR to 15 EUR or more for each transaction gets old quick. Free: Or paying a very little amount compared with what is considered the norm.

throwaway123mmm 8y ago
Try degiro?
- lucas03 8y ago
  yep, https://www.degiro.eu/ https://www.degiro.eu/ has ~0,5$ fee on NYSE and NASDAQ
- Down_n_Out 8y ago
  Thanks, will have a look!
Havoc 8y ago
Not free, but Europeans can sign up with interactive brokers UK and the pricing is very good for US markets. >Paying 7,5 EUR to 15 EUR or more for each transaction gets old quick. Even if there was a free service in Europe I'm not sure I'd use it due to concerns about fill & execution quality. Or to use an IT analogy...if you're not paying you are the product. In this case via order flow being sold.
cfontes 8y ago
https://stocks.getbux.com/ https://stocks.getbux.com/ we will be launching it next year! Disclaimer: I work at BUX.
- dig1 8y ago
  Any plans for trading API? I presume you are from Netherlands, what exchanges you'll cover? What are limits to EU vs non-EU residents? EDIT: formatting...
- Down_n_Out 8y ago

thedangler 8y ago

I wish Alpaca worked for Canadians. There is Questtrade, but comparing the documentation, it isn't as nice to work with.

umitanuki 8y ago
We are working hard to support non-US users!

robertsd247 8y ago

Cool. I like useful posts. All posts should be useful. But not all posts are useful. Most are not useful. Now I have lost my faith in humanity. :(

paulcnichols 8y ago

Cool, but first thought was a sarcastic “What could possibly wrong?”

hackerews 8y ago

Smart to have a SUBMIT button. POST requests with Google Sheets is generally a bad idea since you can't explicitly control when they're sent.

blairanderson 8y ago

removing emotion from the actual decision to make equity purchases should be the main priority for products right now. Would be great to see more programs "building your own ETF". - choose your investment theory - set the variables - get monthly/quarterly updates to SELL:X / BUY:Y

jason_slack 8y ago

So many firms still use Excel to drive trades. When I started out I was using GNumeric and still sometimes use it for quick ideas before coding a strategy in c++

lucas03 8y ago

These common excel spreadsheets used by investors are partly why I am writing my web application. It focuses on DGI investing and dividends in general and I have a lot o plans and room for improvements, but e.g. automatic dividend calendar must be 100 times better than keeping track of dividends in google spreadsheet manually :D

TheGrassyKnoll 8y ago
DGI == Dividend Growth Investing

nodesocket 8y ago

I'm really curious what a simple algorithm would be? I know that penny stock traders usually operate within the first hour of trading mostly looking for stocks that are poised to gap open on some event looking to catch upward momentum, even if only 1% or 2%. Would be awesome to see how this could be accomplished with the Alpaca API.