Brokerages

TD Ameritrade supports cash and margin accounts. To set the account type in an algorithm, see the TD Ameritrade brokerage model documentation.

Create an Account

Follow the account creation wizard on the TD Ameritrade website to create a TD Ameritrade account.

You will need API credentials to deploy live algorithms with your brokerage account. You can't create new API credentials due to the Trader API Schwab Integration.

If you have the API key, follow these steps to retrieve the access token:

1. Open https://auth.tdameritrade.com/oauth?client_id=your-api-key%40AMER.OAUTHAP&response_type=code&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost.
2. On the Secure Log-In page, log in with a TD Ameritrade client account.
3. Click Allow.
4. Get the access token from the page URL (for example, http://localhost/?code=this-blob-is-your-access-code).

The redirect URI must use http. https isn't supported.

See the following resources for additional information:

• Authentication FAQ on the TD Ameritrade website
• TD Ameritrade API Access - 2019 Guide on r/algotrading

In this tutorial, the access token is decoded. QuantConnect's implementation requires the encoded access token (see this-blob-is-your-access-code above).

Paper Trading

The TD Ameritrade API doesn't support paper trading, but you can follow these steps to simulate it:

1. In the Initializeinitialize method of your algorithm, set the TD Ameritrade brokerage model and your account type.
2. Deploy your algorithm with the QuantConnect Paper Trading brokerage.

Our TD Ameritrade integration supports trading US Equities.

You may not be able to trade all assets with TD Ameritrade. For example, if you live in the EU, you can't trade US ETFs. Check with your local regulators to know which assets you are allowed to trade. You may need to adjust settings in your brokerage account to live trade some assets.

The QuantConnect data provider provides US Equity data during live trading.

We model the TD Ameritrade API by supporting several order types, the TimeInForce order property, and order updates. When you deploy live algorithms, you can place manual orders through the IDE.

Order Types

The following table describes the available order types for each asset class that our TD Ameritrade integration supports:

Order Type	Equity
Market
Limit
Stop market
Stop limit

Time In Force

We model the TD Ameritrade API by supporting the following TimeInForce instructions:

• DayDAY
• GoodTilCanceledGOOD_TIL_CANCELED
• GoodTilDategood_til_date

Updates

We model the TD Ameritrade API by supporting order updates.

Handling Splits

If you're using raw data normalization and you have active orders with a limit, stop, or trigger price in the market for a US Equity when a stock split occurs, the following properties of your orders automatically adjust to reflect the stock split:

• Quantity
• Limit price
• Stop price
• Trigger price

To view the TD Ameritrade trading fees, see the Pricing page on the TD Ameritrade website. To view how we model their fees, see Fees.

We model buying power and margin calls to ensure your algorithm stays within the margin requirements. If you have more than $25,000 in your brokerage account, you can use the PatternDayTradingMarginModel to make use of the 4x intraday leverage and 2x overnight leverage available on most brokerages from the PDT rule.

Orders through TD Ameritrade do not experience slippage in backtests. In paper trading and live trading, your orders may experience slippage.

To view how we model TD Ameritrade slippage, see Slippage.

We fill market orders immediately and completely in backtests. In live trading, if the quantity of your market orders exceeds the quantity available at the top of the order book, your orders are filled according to what is available in the order book.

To view how we model TD Ameritrade order fills, see Fills.

If you trade with a margin account, trades settle immediately

To view how we model settlement for TD Ameritrade trades, see Settlement.

When you deploy live algorithms with TD Ameritrade, we don't save your brokerage account credentials.

You can deposit and withdraw cash from your brokerage account while you run an algorithm that's connected to the account. We sync the algorithm's cash holdings with the cash holdings in your brokerage account every day at 7:45 AM Eastern Time (ET).

The following algorithm demonstrates the functionality of the TD Ameritrade brokerage:

You must have an available live trading node for each live trading algorithm you deploy.

Follow these steps to deploy a live algorithm:

1. Open the project you want to deploy.
2. Click the Deploy Live icon.
3. On the Deploy Live page, click the Brokerage field and then click TD Ameritrade from the drop-down menu.
4. Enter your TD Ameritrade account ID, key, and token.

To get your account credentials, see Account Types. Your account details are not saved on QuantConnect.

5. Click the Node field and then click the live trading node that you want to use from the drop-down menu.
6. (Optional) In the Data Provider section, click Show and change the data provider or add additional providers.
7. (Optional) Set up notifications.
8. Configure the Automatically restart algorithm setting.

By enabling automatic restarts, the algorithm will use best efforts to restart the algorithm if it fails due to a runtime error. This can help improve the algorithm's resilience to temporary outages such as a brokerage API disconnection.

9. Click Deploy.

The deployment process can take up to 5 minutes. When the algorithm deploys, the live results page displays. If you know your brokerage positions before you deployed, you can verify they have been loaded properly by checking your equity value in the runtime statistics, your cashbook holdings, and your position holdings.