investopedia-trading-api
An API, written in Python, for Investopedia’s paper trading stock simulator. Pull requests welcome.
This library is now Python 3 compatible!
Installation
For this API to be useful you need an Investopedia trading account, which you can make here.
You can install the library with pip:
pip install InvestopediaApi
Documentation and examples:
Importing everything:
from InvestopediaApi import ita
ita is the name of the file that contains everything of relevance for interacting with Investopedia.
The main class is Account, which logs you into the simulator upon instantiation.
Log into the simulator:
from InvestopediaApi import ita
client = ita.Account("emailaddress", "password")
Currently, Investopedia Api has 4 “meta” functions:
ita.Account.get_portfolio_statusita.Account.get_current_securitiesita.Account.get_open_tradesita.get_quote
get_portfolio_status returns a named tuple with 4 elements: account_val, buying_power, cash, and annual_return.
from InvestopediaApi import ita
client = ita.Account("email", "password")
status = client.get_portfolio_status()
print(status.account_val)
print(status.buying_power)
print(status.cash)
print(status.annual_return)
get_current_securities returns a Portfolio object with 3 attributes: bought, shorted, and options. Each of those is a list of Security objects with the following attributes: symbol, description, quantity, purchase_price, current_price, current_value, and gain_loss
from Investopedia import ita
client = ita.Account("email", "password")
portfolio = client.get_current_securities()
# Portfolio is not a list, it is a namedtuple object with 3 attributes: bought, shorted, options.
# Each of bought, shorted, and options is a list of Security objects, which have attributes
# symbol, description, quantity, purchase_price, current_price, current_value, and gain_loss
bought_securities = portfolio.bought
shorted_securities = portfolio.shorted
options = portfolio.options
for bought in bought_securities:
print(bought.symbol)
print(bought.description)
print(bought.purchase_price)
# etc.
# Repeat above loop for shorted securities and options
get_open_trades returns a list of “open” trades – that is, trades that have been made but not yet executed by the Investopedia platform. It returns a list of Trade namedtuple objects which have the following elements: date_time, description, symbol, and quantity.
from InvestopediaApi import ita
client = ita.Account("email", "password")
open_trades = client.get_open_trades()
for open_trade in open_trades:
print(open_trade.date_time)
print(open_trade.description)
print(open_trade.symbol)
print(open_trade.quantity)
get_quote returns the price of a security given its symbol. Unlike the other 3 meta functions, this is not part of the Account class. Returns false if the security is not found or another error occurs.
from InvestopediaApi import ita
client = ita.Account("email", "password")
print(ita.get_quote("GOOG"))
Making trades
Of course, the most important function in this API is the trade function. This takes, at minimum, a security symbol (string), an orderType (Action class), and a quantity (integer).
The trade function is best illustrated with examples:
Buying 10 shares of Google (GOOG) at market price:
client.trade("GOOG", ita.Action.buy, 10)
Selling 10 shares of Google at market price:
client.trade("GOOG", ita.Action.sell, 10)
Shorting 10 shares of Google:
client.trade("GOOG", ita.Action.short, 10)
Buying 10 shares of Google with a limit order at $500
client.trade("GOOG", ita.Action.buy, 10, "Limit", 500)
You can browse through the code (it’s only in one file) to get a more thorough understanding of the possibilities.
Testing
All Tests: python -m unittest discover
Feature Tests
Feature tests require a config file to be set up InvestopediaApi/tests/config.py. Instructions are in InvestopediaApi/tests/config.example.py.
