/decisions · 2026-05-12 · investing · alpaca-substrate

Alpaca brokerage account — was yesterday exploration only, or account opened?

Decision logged from the Notion task board. Click an action to fire an iMessage back to the Ray session with the decision encoded.

Yesterday we explored Alpaca Markets as the brokerage substrate for Ray-executes-trades capability. Need to know status before next step: do we have an account, or do we need to open one?

Context

The Ray-executes-trades capability needs a brokerage API. Alpaca Markets is the working candidate (commission-free equity trading, programmatic API, paper-trading sandbox, algo-trading-native design — see investing project README for full rationale).

Next step depends on the answer:

If account opened → I'll wire the API keys into 1Password (per no-secrets-on-disk discipline) + build the paper-trading scaffold.
If exploration only → you open the account; I scaffold the integration code against the paper-trading sandbox in parallel.
If you've reconsidered Alpaca → name an alternative (IBKR? Schwab? Tradier?) and I'll re-evaluate the substrate.

Lock in

Account opened

Account is open. Provide a way for me to pick up the API keys (1Password item name is fine).

Account opened + send

Reconsidered — different broker

Alpaca isn't the right substrate. Name what to evaluate instead.

Reconsidered — different broker + send

Exploration only — opening account next

Need to open the account first. Use the two fields if there's anything I should scaffold in parallel.

Split + send

Defer

Push this out to a specific date.

Defer + send