TD Ameritrade Automated Trading

Automated trading scripts for placing trades on TD Ameritrade based on the strategies from Stock Market Options Trading https://www.stockmarketoptionstrading.net
Includes some ideas from Eric's Patreon- https://www.patreon.com/VerticalSpreadOptionsTrading/posts

Prereqs

Developed on Python 3.8

pip install tda-api
pip install selenium
pip install httpx

You will need to install the Chrome Browser and add the chromedriver in a directory in your path (I use /usr/local/bin ) chromedriver - https://sites.google.com/chromium.org/driver/

You will need a TD Ameritrade account with Options permissions Register yourself a TD Ameritrade Developer account and get a API key. This is a separate account from your trading account https://developer.tdameritrade.com/user/me/apps Create a app and get your "Consumer Key"

Copy the sample_config.py to config.py and add your App Consumer Key and your trading account number

Running the program

Run token_renew.py first to create the authentication token. Run this every month to see if your token is about to expire. The program will renew your token 7 days before expiration. If the token expires, the scheduled code will not run.

You can run the program after hours to test and make sure the order is working. After it runs, just delete the order at TD Ameritrade or in Think or Swim.

Set up a cron or schedule job to run the 0dte script on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays at at the optimal time. Run the 7dte script on Wednesdays at 3:30pm(end of day). Adjust your time if you're not in eastern time zone. The job needs to change to the directory the script is in so it finds the authentication token. Edit /home/user/TDAmeri-api to match your system.

# TD Ameri-api BOT  -- Times updated for Aug 2021 update
50 09 * * MON   cd /home/user/TDAmer-api/ && (python3 trade_0dte.py >> trade_0dte.log 2>&1)
55 09 * * WED   cd /home/user/TDAmer-api/ && (python3 trade_0dte.py >> trade_0dte.log 2>&1)
45 09 * * FRI   cd /home/user/TDAmer-api/ && (python3 trade_0dte.py >> trade_0dte.log 2>&1)

30 15 * * WED   cd /home/user/TDAmer-api/ && (python3 trade_7dte.py >> trade_7dte.log 2>&1)
30 15 * * MON   cd /home/user/TDAmer-api/ && (python3 trade_BWB_4dte.py >> trade_BWB_4dte.log 2>&1)
30 15 * * TUE   cd /home/user/TDAmer-api/ && (python3 trade_30dte.py >> trade_30dte.log 2>&1)

The code will monitor the order and after a minute, lower the target price by 5 cents until the order fills or times out after 5 tries.

The 30dte and 60dte code has support for the XSP smaller trades. Edit the line trade_strat = strategies[ "Small"] to Small for XSP and Main for SPX. XSP is one tenth of SPX and is better for smaller accounts. Read Eric's postings on the why.

Added a trade tracking log sheet. Records the time of the trade in UTC, which is how TD Ameritrade tracks it.

Run log_cleanup.sh occasionally to tar the log files into a date based archive.

WARNING

• No guarantees, this is not stock advice.
• I'm not responsible for any losses, but wouldn't mind if you shared some of the winnings :-)

Buy me a coffee/donations

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/greybeardcode

Updates

2021-0803 - Added new Aug 2021 0dte rules, cleaned up common code, added BWB trade bot 2021-0809 - cleaned up common code, added order monitoring 2021-0810 - Added code to support distance or delta for spreads. Added 30dte on Tuesdays, Added support for XSP 2021-0830 - Added 60DTE trade, trade logging, and cron log clean up

TODO

Add log rotation - clean up log file weekly from cron jobs Add 120dte hedge strategy