TradingBot’s documentation¶

Introduction¶

TradingBot is an autonomous trading system that uses customised strategies to trade in the London Stock Exchange market. This documentation provides an overview of the system, explaining how to create new trading strategies and how to integrate them with TradingBot. Explore the next sections for a detailed documentation of each module too.

TradingBot¶

This is an attempt to create an autonomous market trading script using the IG REST API and any other available data source for market prices.

TradingBot is meant to be a “forever running” process that keeps analysing the markets and taking actions whether the conditions are met. It is halfway from an academic project and a real useful piece of software, I guess I will see how it goes :)

The main goal of this project is to provide the capability to write a custom trading strategy with the minimum effort. TradingBot handle all the boring stuff.

All the credits for the FAIG_iqr strategy goes to GitHub user @tg12 who is the creator of the first script version and gave me a good starting point for this project. Thank you.

Dependencies¶

Python 3.5+
Pipenv

View file Pipfile for the full list of required python packages.

Install¶

First if you have not yet done so, install python 3.5+ and pipenv

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip
sudo -H pip3 install -U pipenv

Clone this repo in your workspace and setup the python virtual environment by running the following commands in the repository root folder

pipenv install --three

You can install development packages adding the flag --dev

The following step is to install TradingBot:

sudo ./install.py

All necessary files are copied in /opt/TradingBot by default. It is recommended to add this path to your PATH environment variable.

The last step is to set file permissions for your user on the installed folders with the following command:

sudo chown -R $USER: $HOME/.TradingBot

Setup¶

Login to your IG Dashboard

Obtain an API KEY from the settings panel
If using the demo account, create demo credentials
Take note of your spread betting account ID (demo or real)
Visit AlphaVantage website: https://www.alphavantage.co
Request a free api key
Insert these info in a file called .credentials

This must be in json format

{
    "username": "username",
    "password": "password",
    "api_key": "apikey",
    "account_id": "accountId",
    "av_api_key": "apiKey"
}

Copy the .credentials file into the $HOME/.TradingBot/data folder
Revoke permissions to read the file .. code-block:: guess

cd data sudo chmod 600 $HOME/.TradingBot/data/.credentials

Market source¶

There are different ways to define which markets to analyse with TradinbgBot. You can select your preferred option in the config.json file with the market_source parameter:

Local file

You can create a file epic_ids.txt containg IG epics of the companies you want to monitor. You need to copy this file into the data folder.

Watchlist

You can use an IG watchlist, TradingBot will analyse every market added to the selected watchlist

API

TradingBot navigates the IG markets dynamically using the available API call to fetch epic ids.

Configuration file¶

The config.json file is in the config folder and it contains several configurable parameter to personalise how TradingBot work. These are the description of each parameter:

General¶

max_account_usable: The maximum percentage of account funds to use (A safe value is around 50%)
time_zone: The timezone to use (i.e. ‘Europe/London)
enable_log: Enable the log in a file rather than on stdout
log_file: Define the full file path for the log file to use, if enabled. {home} and {timestamp} placeholders are replaced with the user home directory and the timestamp when TradingBot started
debug_log: Enable the debug level in the logging
credentials_filepath: Filepath for the .credentials file
market_source: The source to use to fetch the market ids. Available values as explained above are: [list, watchlist, api]
epic_ids_filepath: The full file path for the local file containing the list of epic ids
watchlist_name: The watchlist name to use as market source, if selected
active_strategy: The strategy name to use. Must match one of the names in the Strategies section below

IG Interface¶

order_type: The IG order type (MARKET, LIMIT, etc.). Do NOT change it
order_size: The size of the spread bets
order_expiry: The order expiry (DFB). Do NOT change it
order_currency: The currency of the order (For UK shares leave it as GBP)
order_force_open: Force to open the orders
use_g_stop: Use guaranteed stops. Read IG terms for more info about them.
use_demo_account: Trade on the DEMO IG account. If enabled remember to setup the demo account credentials too
controlled_risk: Enable the controlled risk stop loss calculation. Enable only if you have a controlled risk account.
paper_trading: Enable the paper trading. No real trades will be done on the IG account.

Alpha Vantage¶

enable: Enable the use of AlphaVantage API
api_timeout: Timeout in seconds between each API call

Strategies¶

Settings specific for each strategy

SimpleMACD¶

spin_interval: Override the Strategies value
max_spread_perc: Spread percentage to filter markets with high spread
limit_perc: Limit percentage to take profit for each trade
stop_perc: Stop percentage to stop any loss

Start TradingBot¶

You can start TradingBot in your current terminal

/opt/TradingBot/src/TradingBot.py

or you can start it in detached mode, letting it run in the background

nohup /opt/TradingBot/src/TradingBot.py >/dev/null 2>&1 &

Close all the open positions¶

/opt/TradingBot/src/TradingBot.py -c

Stop TradingBot¶

To stop a TradingBot instance running in the background

ps -ef | grep TradingBot | xargs kill -9

Test¶

You can run the test from the workspace with:

pipenv run pytest

Documentation¶

The Sphinx documentation contains further details about each TradingBot module with source code documentation of each class member. Explanation is provided regarding how to create your own Strategy and how to integrate it with the system.

Read the documentation at:

https://tradingbot.readthedocs.io

You can build it locally with:

pipenv run sphinx-build -nWT -b html doc doc/_build/html

The generated html files will be in doc/_build/html.

Automate¶

NOTE: TradingBot monitors the market opening hours and suspend the trading when the market is closed. Generally you should NOT need a cron job!

You can set up the crontab job to run and kill TradinBot at specific times. The only configuration required is to edit the crontab file adding the preferred schedule:

crontab -e

As an example this will start TradingBot at 8:00 in the morning and will stop it at 16:35 in the afternoon, every week day (Mon to Fri):

00 08 * * 1-5 /opt/TradingBot/src/TradingBot.py
35 16 * * 1-5 kill -9 $(ps | grep "/opt/TradingBot/src/TradingBot.py" | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $1 }')

NOTE: Remember to set the correct timezone in your machine!

Docker¶

You can run TradingBot in a Docker container (https://docs.docker.com/). First you need to build the Docker image used by TradingBot:

./docker_run.sh build

Once the image is built you can install TradingBot and then run it in a Docker container:

./docker_run.sh start

The container will be called dkr_trading_bot and the logs will still be stored in the configured folder in the host machine. By default $HOME/.TradingBot/log.

Check the Dockerfile and the docker_run.sh for more details

To stop the TradingBot container:

docker kill dkr_trading_bot

If you need to start a bash shell into a running container

docker exec -it dkr_trading_bot bash

Contributing¶

Any contribution or suggestion is welcome, please follow the suggested workflow.

Pull Requests¶

To add a new feature or to resolve a bug, create a feature branch from the develop branch.

Commit your changes and if possible add unit/integration test cases. Eventually push your branch and create a Pull Request against develop.

If you instead find problems or you have ideas and suggestions for future improvements, please open an Issue. Thanks for the support!