Trade on paper — Orbital

What Trade is

Trade is the app in Orbital that runs your strategies on an Alpaca paper account. It shows what each strategy holds, what it has ordered and what it has done. Open it from Trade in the sidebar, or go to https://app.orbitalaip.com/apps/trade.

Only a workspace owner or admin can use Trade; anyone else sees Only a workspace owner or admin can see trading.

Orbital installs Trade in the workspace it creates when you sign up. If it is missing, a workspace owner or admin can install it from Settings → Apps. See Apps.

A strategy is built in Workflows or Backtesting; Trade is where it runs. Deploy a strategy walks through the first deployment.

Paper accounts only

Trade places orders on an Alpaca paper account. A workspace owner or admin connects it in Settings → Plugins, where the Alpaca card reads Paper trading for the Trade app. Live accounts are never connected. See Connect Alpaca.

Live trading is not offered, and a deployment that targets a live account is refused.

An account can have order sending switched off, and Trade then places no orders on it. The deploy review warns Order sending is turned off for this account. In Activity, an order refused this way shows Sends disabled.

Paper trading tests execution as well as the rules. Alpaca's paper simulator fills the orders, so a fill can land away from the price a backtest modelled. Backtest, forward test and paper compares the three.

The account is a tab in Trade's header: the broker's name, a masked account number and a Paper chip. The + button beside it lists every connected account under Show as a tab. Its Connect a broker row is inactive: you connect a broker in Settings → Plugins, not in Trade.

The five views

Trade has five tabs: Overview, Strategies, Positions, Orders and Activity. All but Strategies are for the account tab you have selected, and P&L, orders and activity explains them.

Strategies lists every strategy in the project, with its results on the selected account: Every strategy, its evidence and how it is doing. Filter it by All, Live, Paper, Tested, Untested or Retired. Live is empty, because live trading is not offered. Each row shows the version, State, Evidence (a Sharpe ratio and a trade count from Backtesting), Realized gain and Trend. Trials, Allocation and Live since show a dash on a paper account. Add a strategy opens the create gallery in Workflows.

Each position belongs to the strategy that opened it; positions from New order or from outside Trade show as Manual, and no strategy trades them. See Positions.

A trade held for your approval is answered in Activity. See Approvals and permissions.

What a deployment is

In Trade, a deployment is one strategy version running on one paper account. Deployments in the header lists them under Running, and Ready to deploy lists Strategies that are not running anywhere.

A deployment keeps the version it was deployed with; to run another version, stop it and deploy that one. See Editing a strategy after it is deployed.

Its four limits, Budget, Max per trade, Open positions and Daily loss pause, cap entries only; selling to exit is never capped. See The four limits.

Each deployment acts under a trading permission: Deny, Ask, Auto or Always-approve. A Rules or Program strategy deploys under Always-approve. See The trading permission.

A strategy has one paper deployment at a time. Deploying it again, or another of its versions, is refused until that deployment has finished stopping, which happens once it holds nothing. A workspace can have up to 3 Rules or Program deployments at once, paused and stopping ones included.

Pause stops new trades while exits keep working, and Stop is final and sells nothing. See Pause and resume.

The ⋯ button at the right of the header opens the account menu. It offers Pause all strategies, Cancel all open orders, Close all positions and Stop everything…, which does all three in a safe order. See The account menu.

New order, to the left of Deployments, opens a ticket for a manual order on the account.