Zorro newbie here. I live in the U.S. and wish to trade Z3 with an Ally Invest account. I have:
1. Obtained an Ally Invent account 2. Deposited funds into my Ally account 3. Downloaded and installed the Ally Invest plug-in (thanks to AndrewAMD) 4. Downloaded historical data 5. Run a TEST of Zorro/Z3 on my local machine. It works! 6. Created a VM in Azure 7. Installed Zorro with historical data on the VM 8. Run a TEST of Zorro/Z3 on the Azure VM. It works!
Now, I would actually like to start live trading from my Azure VM. I would like to trade EUR/USD but I am confused about the following:
1. What should my Z/.ini file look like? Do I need to make any modifications? Does anyone have a sample .ini file I could see? 2. What should my asset list file look like? Do I need to make any modifications? Does anyone have a sample .csv asset file I could see? 3. Just to test out Z3 trading, can I start with a capital allocation of $1000.00, or is that too little?
Thank you in advance for the courtesy of reading this post, and for any answers.
Clyde W. Ford
Re: Trading Z3 with Ally Invest
[Re: cwford]
#479343 03/20/2016:2303/20/2016:23
Ally only trades stocks, ETFs, and stock options. The Z3 system was designed to trade forex and CFD's - Ally has neither of these. You would need an all-original asset list with all-original historical data.
Also, it is not legal for USA residents to trade CFD's.
One more thing - when I wrote the plugin, it was originally for TradeKing's API. Then Ally bought TradeKing and kept the API open, but then Ally took on an anti-algorithmic-trader stance. They want to charge you $200+ per month for using their live market data per the demands of their data vendor, even if you're an indie trader.
If they didn't tell you up front, they will eventually inform you months later (as was my case), so I moved my funds elsewhere.
My advice: Either use IB for stocks/etfs/options/futures or Oanda for forex.
It is not possible to use the Ally plugin without acquiring market data from Ally.
I have personally abandoned Ally due to the $200/mo fee that they wanted to impose on me. They don't even have this fee documented on their website, which is ridiculous!
It's actually cheaper to use IB with an IB Pro account because of this fee.
I have pursued this a little further with Ally (why let a good plugin go to waste?!).
Ally says the only fee close to this is a real-time data fee (currently $120-$130/mo) the exchange charges when this data is given to "professional" customers - those who use the data for business, are Securities Professionals, etc.
Could this be what happened to you?
Thanks.
Re: Trading Z3 with Ally Invest
[Re: cwford]
#481366 09/02/2013:2409/02/2013:24
No. Non-professional vs professional is not the issue. The question is - are you an algorithmic trader?
I just pulled up the emails, and it's much worse than I remembered!
In October 2017, I received the below email from Ally:
Quote
Dear Valued Client,
Thank you for being an Ally Invest API user. Part of our responsibility of providing an API with Real-time data, is reviewing how the market data is being used. To help us do that we ask that you please take a moment to complete the attached questionnaire. Once complete, you can email the questionnaire to apiquestionnaire@invest.ally.com. If you have more than one application please complete a separate questionnaire for each application.
Please return the completed questionnaire by 10/16/2017, to avoid any disruption to your application. If we do not receive your completed questionnaire by 10/16/2017, then your API access will be restricted.
We appreciate your attention to this request,
The Ally Invest API Team.
Attached is the questionnaire. I filled it out, and obviously, I checked all of the boxes at the bottom.
They replied:
Quote
Thank you for your questionnaire! Unfortunately, based on your questionnaire, we are not able to allow you API access. This is due to your use of data in a non-displayed fashion:
Non-Display use of real-time market data is defined by the Exchanges as accessing, processing, or consuming market data for a purpose other than in support of the data recipient’s display. The Exchanges have recently begun to enforce this rule in terms of monthly fees to the user and fines to data vendors that offer data and are not monitoring how that data is consumed.
As a data vendor, Ally Invest must respect and enforce the rules provided by the Exchanges. After reviewing your responses to the questionnaire, it appears you are using market data in a non-displayed manner. Consequently, we may no longer be able to provide real-time market data to your application, which means we might need to terminate your API access. We are working on a solution that would provide 15-minute delayed data via the API, which the Exchanges would not charge for. Until that time, you will need to work with our API Business Development team to see what options are available to you. That team will reach out to you shortly. Please be responsive to discussing your situation with them so that we can attempt to prevent turning off your access.
The email then went on to describe all the monthly fees, which are thousands of dollars per exchange! I attached that pricing info as well in the zip file.
Thanks for sharing this, Andrew. That does sound rather grotesque. Ally appears to do everything in their power to drive good customers to competitors.
> My advice: Either use IB for stocks/etfs/options/futures or Oanda for forex
That's a good rule of thumb. Do you (or anyone else) have experience with IG? How do they fit in?
Re: Trading Z3 with Ally Invest
[Re: cwford]
#481368 09/02/2020:2809/02/2020:28
