I’d like to open a dedicated thread for Alpaca:
They just announced their Series D raise:
You lost me at Silicon Valley … 
Ken Griffin of Citadel Securities seems to have more faith
He has not only more faith than me … 
Wasn’t Alpaca a crypto DeFi exchange and yield aggregator? I think to remember that I used them once 5 years (or so) ago for yield farming. These were crazy times and if I had more balls I would have taken home an awesome return (or more likely getting completely broke 
)
Why do we need another US broker?
Isn’t IBKR enough
Oh, I can tell you why Ken wants another broker … I pay him every time I trade a US listed security.
Edit: I should add, for the non-insiders, that Ken is a major shareholder of the Depository Trust and Clearing System (DTCC) which, well, is the middle man for most security transactions in the U.S.
Why do you not need another US broker?
I don’t know. I just saw that Saxo and Degiro and SwissQuote and every other broker has a thread here. I need Alpaca because of its great API and zero commissions and US regulations and FDIC insurance and broker diversification. I would like to share experiences. I have IBKR. The API is difficult. The fees are higher. The Website is slow. It‘s trustworthy. The regulatory situation is confusing (UK or US?).
I don’t know anything about that. I‘ve only been using it for 3 years.
same here and tbh I feel a bit offended by their namechoice
Interesting. Call me wrong on this, I don’t think most users here us API for trading in a US broker. I see your point that API might be a selling point of Alapca. To me, they seem more focused on professional traders. For me a must would be margin loans. I don’t see this for Alpaca.
It was actually not my intention to suggest that Alpaca is a particularly good fit for Swiss Mustachians. But personally I like it a lot, and wanted a dedicated place to discuss it.
Please note that you don’t have to use the API. You can buy and sell manually via their web dashboard.
US-brokers in general are of interest for Swiss investors for various reasons:
Margin:
Fair. I appreciate that.
Yes, but I see Alpaca as highlighting their API. Which gives me the impression that they focus on this feature.
I think we all agree on this. However, as a Swiss investor, I think we need to apply more scrutiny when using a US broker. I personally feel much more confident trying out, and eventually switching to a new Swiss broker (Saxo is probably the best example) than a US broker. But of course, nothing prevents a different US broker to eventually take the place of IB in the long term.
I disagree. My definition of margin ranges from a two day minus of USD 10 to permanent loan of 1 Mio and beyond. If you have a regular account on IB you’re not able to go into minus at any point.
As per margin fees I see 6.25% interst on margin for USD. Seems quite high to me compared to IB. Also, I don’t see any rate for a CHF margin.
Yes, that’s how they position themselves.
Absolutely, and it is always a trade-off. The decision depends on your personal priorities / criteria. And you can have multiple brokers, be a buy-and-holder with most of your networth, and still experiment with more active or risky stuff.
My definition of margin is a broker lending you money. But I agree that Swiss tax authorities probably will ignore it if it’s a negligible percentage of your net worth, or just a temporary transaction effect.
Yes, IBKR margin rates are maybe the best currently. But I would have expected margin to be the least important criteria for Mustachians, in order to avoid running afoul of the pro-trader rules.
What I would find more interesting: Do you use the API, and if so, for what? For Trading or analysis/statistics?
And if you read the save haven criteria before that, you will see that external financing is no problem even for significant amounts.
Indeed 
. As with other topics like startups, self-driving cars, biological immortality and mars colonization, in Switzerland I always get stuck at the why, and hardly ever get to discuss the how. Which - as a side note - is the reason I tend to bet on the US economy.
Yes, I have been using the Alpaca API for 3 years now. At the very beginning I sent an inquiry to SIX, asking if an individual could get access to their FIX API (I see they now have a new web API). Someone even called me back at the time, but it became quickly apparent that SIX was not a good fit 
.
I then looked at IBKR’s API offerings: 3 years ago they didn’t have a web API either. You could either implement their own format or use their Trader Workstation (TWS) for automation.
Then I looked at Meta Trader: Many non-US brokers offer a MetaTrader account, as did FlowBank. FlowBank also had their own REST API, where I made my first real attempts, but it was buggy and not very well documented.
Then I found metaAPI, which allowed programmatic access to any broker offering a MetaTrader account. I did a proof of concept with Admirals. They offered 200:1 leverage to Swiss clients and were regulated neither in the EU nor the US.
The first broker I found with a modern and well documented web (REST) API was IG. All my previous attempts took me weeks just to get anything working at all. With IG I was up and running within 1-2 days.
At about that time I became more aware of the fundamental conflict of interest that CFD brokers have, and that you are not actually owning the stocks you buy there. I did one more experiment with Capital.com, which has an even more modern REST API. But I knew I wanted a US-broker eventually.
Then I found Alpaca, and not only were they US-regulated and accepted Swiss customers, they also offered real time market data for 99$/month, by far the best offer I’m aware of. Actually the only other company with prices on their website I found was DataBento.
While saving up for 25k to qualify for daytrading, I used the market data API to build my own data visualization tools. Afterwards I built my own UI for manual trading, because I was frustrated with all the other broker platforms and TradingView. Everything seemed to take way too many clicks, and visualization of trading volume was only rudimentary. And the support for 24/5 trading is not where I would like it to be.
I’m still looking for a provider to offer access to level 2 data for NYSE and NASDAQ (order books). Haven’t found that so far.
My discretionary trading has not been going well so far (from a financial perspective). So the current plan is to come up with a more conservative mechanical strategy that could run fully automated. Something like my own top 100 ETF, maybe combined with option selling for entry points when the market dips, or some dynamic margin usage.
Can you point me more specifically to that info?
Hm, I would have thought that using margin to buy equity = “fremdfinanziert”.