[bwood]

Alpaca is great! As far as brokerage APIs go, theirs is top notch and a breeze to code for. The founders are also really responsive and helpful.

I know this because I wrote an app that connects to Alpaca accounts (as well as other brokerages) to help people build their own custom index funds [0]. It only took a few weeks to build our Alpaca integration, whereas other brokerages often take months/years just to get access to their APIs.

[0] https://getpassiv.com/

[voiper1]

For my own managed funds/indexes, I use https://m1finance.com, also with no fees.

You specify pies of funds with weights.

They automatically allocate funds and dividends to the underweight entries, and have 1 click for rebalancing.

It's not made for single-real time trading, there's one trading window each day.

Sure beats the spreadsheet and whole-share issues when I did it for free with Robinhood.

[meesterdude]

I love M1! But I have come to hate their "tech". Obscure URL's (what was that stock you looked at two days ago? good luck finding it in your history!), broken watchlist, can't explore adjustments to a pie (such as two windows to submit/revert a pie change), have to contact support to pause trading, backtesting breaks if stocks are listed <5 years ago... they recently added dark mode to their app with terrible contrast of red/green (the green looks black in white mode so you have to use dark)

I feel like their UX priorities are screwed up big time. But as a platform, they're my favorite as far as concept/functionality.

[giorgioz]

how does Alpaca make money?

[tom_mellior]

They have a well-hidden FAQ section: https://support.alpaca.markets/hc/en-us/articles/36001104717...

They list several ways in which they "will" make money. My (possibly unkind) reading is that currently they're burning investor money.

[throwaway888abc]

Guesing, they are selling order flow. Same like Robin Hood

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/a-controversial-part-of-robi...

[TeMPOraL]

So Robin Hood is taking from the rich, giving to the poor, and then turning around and selling the poor out?

[psanford]

Selling order flow isn't "selling the poor out". Reg NMS literally requires brokerages to route your orders to where they will get the best execution price. In general you as a retail investor get better execution prices because of how this works (why? because retail investors generally don't have new information that will move the price so they are "safe" trades for liquidity providers).

Now robin hood _did_ get fined for "not perform[ing] systematic best execution reviews of several order types". If that's what you were referring to then fine. But if your complaint is just about selling order flow you should better understand what that means. Maybe start with patio11's How Brokerages Make Money[0].

[0]: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-mone...

[TeMPOraL]

Yeah, I misunderstood what "selling order flow" means; I was under impression this is something closer to front-running. Thanks for the link!

[KeithBrink]

Nice to see you on here, big fan of Passiv!