When Upstox - formally known as RKSV was born in 2010, it was only a few months after exchanges allowed programmatic trading. I remember placing our first trades on an ancient broker terminal and thinking how it could be so behind.
Our history with programmatic trading
We had a few strategies in mind that we wanted to try out but there was no way to know whether it would work. We came from a background where strategies were backtested using historical data. After that, they were put test with small amounts of capital. At that time this was not possible with the broker we were trading with.
So we decided to change our fate, and get our own licenses. I spent first few months just collecting historical prices to build our own price database. Raghu worked hard on trying different strategies based on the little data that we did have. A few months later, we got the green light from the exchanges to trade using our servers. This was around the time Raghu thought he found a strategy that seemed to click.
That changed everything for us.
Within the next two months, we had several strategies running for us during the day. Backtests were running every night to tell us whether the strategy still worked. Any tweaks were done after market hours. All this would not have been possible had we not made the investment in building an infrastructure that supports the trader.
Introducing Upstox Developer
Today, I'm proud to say, that 7 years after we had our first stint with API trading, you can have yours too. Upstox has launched a developer portal this week.
- Programmatic trading - Get direct access to historical data, live market feed, live trades, and order placement/modifications functionality to you via REST and Socket
- ** Coming soon ** Platform Bridge - We've built a bridge for AmiBroker which will allow you to get live market data for NSE CM, NSE F&O, and NSE CDS. You will also be able to generate the order alert directly on to Upstox Pro Web
Smarter trading is the future. Technology has to provide feedback on how we trade, visualize our gains and losses, and, eventually, manage our risk. Finding innovative ways to help traders achieve this is our job. The software is the way of the future.