Book Image

Python Algorithmic Trading Cookbook

By : Pushpak Dagade
Book Image

Python Algorithmic Trading Cookbook

By: Pushpak Dagade

Overview of this book

If you want to find out how you can build a solid foundation in algorithmic trading using Python, this cookbook is here to help. Starting by setting up the Python environment for trading and connectivity with brokers, you’ll then learn the important aspects of financial markets. As you progress, you’ll learn to fetch financial instruments, query and calculate various types of candles and historical data, and finally, compute and plot technical indicators. Next, you’ll learn how to place various types of orders, such as regular, bracket, and cover orders, and understand their state transitions. Later chapters will cover backtesting, paper trading, and finally real trading for the algorithmic strategies that you've created. You’ll even understand how to automate trading and find the right strategy for making effective decisions that would otherwise be impossible for human traders. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to use Python libraries to conduct key tasks in the algorithmic trading ecosystem. Note: For demonstration, we're using Zerodha, an Indian Stock Market broker. If you're not an Indian resident, you won't be able to use Zerodha and therefore will not be able to test the examples directly. However, you can take inspiration from the book and apply the concepts across your preferred stock market broker of choice.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Technical requirements

You will need the following to successfully execute the recipes in this chapter:

  • Python 3.7+
  • Python packages: pyalgotrading ($ pip install pyalgotrading)

The latest Jupyter notebook for this chapter can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Python-Algorithmic-Trading-Cookbook/tree/master/Chapter07.

The first thing needed for setting connectivity with the broker is getting the API keys. The broker will provide each customer with unique keys, typically as an api-key and api-secret key pair. These API keys are chargeable, usually on a monthly subscription basis. You need to get your copy of api-key and api-secret from the broker website before starting this. You can refer to Appendix I for more details.

The following steps will help you to set up the broker connection with Zerodha, which will be used by all of the recipes in this chapter. Please make sure you have followed these steps before trying out any recipe:

  1. Import the necessary modules...