4/2/2021 The Eight Best Python Libraries for Algorithmic Trading

Discover your favorite open-s

The Eight Best Python

Libraries for Algorithmic
Trading
November 28, 2020 • 🥕 3 mins read

Even as someone with significant experience in software engineering and some

knowledge of data science, I underwent a learning curve when I started
algorithmic trading. Feeling productive took some time. I found myself writing my
own Bollinger bands, or scouring for trading calendars, or using each
cryptocurrency exchange's idiosyncratic APIs instead of an abstraction over all of
them. These are the Python libraries I wish I'd known when I began chasing alpha.
They'll help you make money faster.

1. FinTA
FinTA (Financial Technical Analysis) implements over eighty trading indicators in
Pandas. Unlike many other trading libraries, which try to do a bit of everything,
FinTA only ingests dataframes and spits out trading indicators. Even the
comments above each method are instructive, e.g., this comment annotating
MACD. You'll likely see some indicators you don't even recognize, and the breadth
of technical analysis encourages experimentation.

2. Zipline
Zipline is the best of the generalist trading libraries. It has almost 13k stars (see
my article on using data to evaluate software packages here) and powers
Quantopian, one of the most popular quant-finance communities, at least until
Robinhood recently acquired it. Zipline allows you to ingest data from the
command line (or a Jupyter notebook) and comes built-in with methods to
facilitate writing complex strategies and backtesting them.
https://thecarrots.io/blog/best-python-libraries-for-algorithmic-trading 1/4
4/2/2021 The Eight Best Python Libraries for Algorithmic Trading

3. CCXT
CCXT (CryptoCurrency eXchange Trading) is a lifesaver if you programmatically
trade cryptocurrency. No more will you have to write custom logic for each
exchange. CCXT abstracts away differences between individual exchange APIs
with a unified interface. It supports more than 120 exchanges. If you're not a
Pythonist, you can even use the JavaScript and PHP implementations of CCXT
(though you should get better taste in programming languages).

4. Freqtrade
Freqtrade is another crypto trading library that supports many exchanges. It
facilitates backtesting, plotting, machine learning, performance status, reports,
etc. You might be sighing at this point. How many cryptocurrency trading libraries
does one algorithmic trading enthusiast need? What's amazing about Freqtrade
is that you can control it with Telegram. That's right: you can henceforth DM your
robot investment manager. Here are some of its awesome Telegram commands:

/status [table] : lists all open trades;

/profit : lists cumulative profit;

/forcesell <trade_id>|all : sells the given trade;

/performance : performance of each finished trade grouped by pair;

/balance : account balance per currency;

/daily <n> : profit or loss per day, over the last n days.

If you want to power up your Freqtrade trading bot and turn it into a Gundam
ready to ravage financial markets on your behalf, check out Freqtrade Strategies,
which is what its name suggests.

5. YFinance
If you've been trading for long, you've likely heard of Yahoo! Finance. YFinance
allows you to reliably and efficiently download market data from Yahoo! Finance.
The library arose from a dire need when Yahoo decommissioned their historical
data API. The library's creator wrote a helpful tutorial here.

6. Backtrader

https://thecarrots.io/blog/best-python-libraries-for-algorithmic-trading 2/4
4/2/2021 The Eight Best Python Libraries for Algorithmic Trading

Backtrader is a popular Python framework for backtesting and trading that

includes data feeds, resampling tools, trading calendars, etc. What sets
Backtrader apart aside from its features and reliability is its active community
and blog. Backtrader's community could fill a need given Quantopian's recent
shutdown.

7. TensorTrade
TensorTrade is a framework for building trading algorithms that use deep
reinforcement learning. It provides abstractions over numpy , pandas , gym , keras ,
and tensorflow to accelerate development. TensorTrade is still in beta, but it's
quickly gaining traction and will likely become a mainstay in the quant
community. Adam King, the creator of Tensor Trade, wrote an excellent tutorial.

8. Trump2Cash
I saved the memeiest library for last. Trump2Cash monitors Donald Trump's
tweets. When he mentions publicly traded companies, it analyzes the tweet's
sentiment and executes trades accordingly. The library even includes a utility to
benchmark its historical performance. I'm not making any kind of
recommendation, but the algorithm has been surprisingly successful.

Even supposing that Trump's ability to influence financial markets will soon
wane, the source code is easily adaptable to other Twitter accounts. If you're
interested in Twitter sentiment as a feature for a trading strategy, the repo is
more than worth a look.

— Sam Winter

🥕 Join the Carrots community

We help you discover the newest and best open-source software.

Sign Up

https://thecarrots.io/blog/best-python-libraries-for-algorithmic-trading 3/4
4/2/2021 The Eight Best Python Libraries for Algorithmic Trading

FIND JOBS

BLOG

TWITTER

TELEGRAM

CONTACT

Privacy Policy

Terms and Conditions

https://thecarrots.io/blog/best-python-libraries-for-algorithmic-trading 4/4