Moving my manual options strategy to a bot (5-10 trades per day). Need API advice.
u/chrisrivera924 ·
Reddit — r/algotrading
· March 01, 2026 at 19:42
· ⬆ 17 pts
· 💬 22 comments
| View on Reddit ↗
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Summary
The author, u/chrisrivera924, is seeking technical advice on automating a profitable, low-frequency manual options trading strategy using Python.
The author's strategy is based on price action, uses a 9EMA trailing stop, and involves scaling out of positions. They are evaluating brokers like Alpaca and Tradier for API access.
This post is a technical inquiry about implementation, not a market thesis or a specific trade recommendation. It is noise from an investment perspective.
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I've been trading a specific price action strategy for a while now and I'm ready to automate it so I can step away from the screen. I only take about 5-10 trades a day, so I don't need a supercomputer, but I do need zero-delay data for options premiums.
I'm building this in Python. I need to be able to:
Stream live 2m and 5m data.
Monitor the 9EMA for a trailing stop.
Scale out 50% of the position automatically.
Access pre-market data.
I have about $200/mo set aside for the API and data fees. I’m currently looking at Alpaca and Tradier since they seem to be the most "bot-friendly" brokers for retail guys.
Has anyone here successfully automated a low-volume options strategy using these? I'm specifically worried about the bid/ask data being accurate enough to handle a tight trailing stop. I'd love to hear from anyone who has actually put a Python bot live on these platforms. Cheers!