3 Months of Paper Trading on Alpaca - Tell me how it sucks
u/chysallis ·
Reddit — r/algotrading
· June 30, 2026 at 20:12
· ⬆ 17 pts
· 💬 48 comments
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Summary
The author describes a paper trading algorithm on Alpaca with 3x leverage that has been running for 3 months in a bull market, primarily benefiting from AI/tech stocks.
They acknowledge limited financial knowledge but strong CS background, and express concern that the system has only experienced one market regime.
The post is a request for feedback on the system’s robustness rather than a specific investment thesis or trade recommendation.
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Alpaca paper trading. $50k initial cash, allowed 3x leverage.
I know very little about finance but quite a bit about computer science. Stuff go up, me happy. Stuff go down, less happy.
I know that it greatly took advantage of a bull market in AI/Tech stocks, but from what I can tell it is because it was parsing the right signals. Due to the way the system is built, I can't really run an out of sample backtest. So paper trading forward is my best shot.
System is allowed to trade stocks or options. It has a universe of 100 tickers from diversified sectors.
So pick this apart please. I plan on letting it run paper for a while longer. Right now it has only really seen 1 regime and that worries me but the underlying architecture "should" be able to handle regime changes. Should being the operative word.