Feature Requests: Python API and Paper Trading

Myself and roughly fifteen of my fellow developers have been interested in getting into trading for a while, and we’re interested in Freetrade, but it’s seeming unlikely as we aren’t able to interact with any form of API to automatically execute trades with Python. I’ve suggested Python as it is easy to learn, and it is not suitable for high frequency traders (HFTs) so your servers won’t be overloaded by HFTs. To ensure that the app is still simple, maybe you could generate an API key in settings, so that newbies don’t find it too complex. There’s evidently demand for it, so it would be nice to have this by Q4 of 2020 at the latest.

In case you wouldn’t be willing to do this, would it be possible for users to create their own APIs to interact with yours, like Robinstocks for Robinhood?This wouldn’t mean much work would need to be done on your part in terms of creating a Python module. I’d see it as a win-win. I am really interested in Freetrade, especially as Robinhood UK has been scraped, but I’m reluctant about it for now, as there is no algotrading support. Another person has written about algotrading, but I’m bringing it up again to imply that there is HUGE demand for this amongst novice investors who are programmers, or who like it.

Here are some of the benefits of automated trading.

• Greater returns as bots can watch the markets all day every day, whilst humans cannot do this. Bots can execute a trade immediately, reducing the latency and delay, meaning that you get the best price.
• Bots have no emotions nor bias, so human fear and greed don’t affect your trades.
• More data can be processed and monitored in a smaller period of time, so when triggers are met, a trade is executed. Humans need to live, eat, drink, sleep, work repeat, meaning that you can’t monitor the markets all day every day; bots can. A bot can capture 4.2x more opportunities. Humans tend to monitor the markets for 40 hours per week, but bots can do the same for 168 hours.

My other request would be to allow paper trading so that I can get a feel for how the app works before making a decision as to whether or not Freetrade is right for me. Furthermore, we could also test our algorithms with a paper account before implementing it in real life, thus, reducing risk.

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