Brokerages

Clear Street supports cash and margin accounts. To set the account type in an algorithm, see the Clear Street brokerage model documentation.

Create an Account

Follow the sign up wizard on the Clear Street website to create a Clear Street account.

Create API Credentials

To trade with the Clear Street API, you need an API key, which serves as your access token, and the ID of the Clear Street account you want to trade. The following steps summarize how to get them. For more information, see Get Started in the Clear Street API documentation.

1. Log in to the Clear Street web app.
2. Click the Account icon in the left navigation and then click API keys.
3. Generate a named API key and save it. The page shows the status and expiration of each key, and you can revoke a key at any time. Treat the key like a password.
4. Note the numeric account ID of the Clear Street account you want to trade. Clear Street lets you have more than one account, so the account ID picks which one to trade.

Paper Trading

The Clear Street API doesn't support paper trading, but you can follow these steps to simulate it with QuantConnect:

1. In the Initializeinitialize method of your algorithm, set the Clear Street brokerage model and your account type.
2. Deploy your algorithm with the QuantConnect Paper Trading brokerage.

Our Clear Street integration supports the following asset classes:

• US Equities
• Equity Options
• Index Options

You may not be able to trade all assets with Clear Street. For example, if you live in the EU, you can't trade US ETFs. Check with your local regulators to know which assets you are allowed to trade. You may need to adjust settings in your brokerage account to live trade some assets.

The Clear Street API currently supports options trading levels 1 and 2, which cover covered calls, cash-secured puts, and long calls and puts.

Clear Street doesn't provide a live data feed, so we recommend the QuantConnect data provider, which is free and supplies US Equities, US Equity Options, and US Index Options data during live trading. It doesn't supply Index data, so add a third-party data provider such as Polygon to trade Index Options. Index Options need data for the underlying index, such as SPX, VIX, and NDX. For more information about live data providers, see Datasets.

We model the Clear Street API by supporting several order types, the TimeInForce order property, and order updates. When you deploy live algorithms, you can place manual orders through the IDE.

Order Types

The following table describes the available order types for each asset class that our Clear Street integration supports:

Order Type	Equity	Equity Options	Index Options
Market
Limit
Stop market
Stop limit
Trailing stop

Order Properties

We model custom order properties from the Clear Street API. The following table describes the members of the ClearStreetOrderProperties object that you can set to customize order execution.

Updates

We model the Clear Street API by supporting order updates.

Handling Splits

If you're using raw data normalization and you have active orders with a limit, stop, or trigger price in the market for a US Equity when a stock split occurs, the following properties of your orders automatically adjust to reflect the stock split:

• Quantity
• Limit price
• Stop price
• Trigger price

Clear Street limits the rate of requests to its trading API and answers with a 429 Too Many Requests error when you exceed the limit. Clear Street doesn't publish the limit values. Our Clear Street integration reads your order updates by polling the API every 3 seconds. To avoid hitting these limits, design your algorithm to issue orders sparingly.

Clear Street doesn't publish its trading fees on its website. To learn the fees of your account, contact Clear Street. To view how we model their fees, see Fees.

We model buying power and margin calls to ensure your algorithm stays within the margin requirements.

Orders through Clear Street do not experience slippage in backtests and QuantConnect Paper Trading. In live trading, your orders may experience slippage.

To view how we model Clear Street slippage, see Slippage.

QuantConnect fills market orders immediately and completely in backtests and QuantConnect Paper Trading. In live trading, if the quantity of your market orders exceeds the quantity available at the top of the order book, your orders are filled according to what is available in the order book.

To view how we model Clear Street order fills, see Fills.

If you trade with a margin account, trades settle immediately

To view how we model settlement for Clear Street trades, see Settlement.

When you deploy live algorithms with Clear Street, we don't save your credentials.

You can deposit and withdraw cash from your brokerage account while you run an algorithm that's connected to the account. We sync the algorithm's cash holdings with the cash holdings in your brokerage account every day at 7:45 AM Eastern Time (ET).

The following algorithm demonstrates the functionality of the Clear Street brokerage:

// Demonstrate Clear Street brokerage functionality with an EMA crossover strategy on SPY.
public class ClearStreetDemoAlgorithm : QCAlgorithm
{
    private ExponentialMovingAverage _fast;
    private ExponentialMovingAverage _slow;

    public override void Initialize()
    {
        SetStartDate(2024, 9, 1);
        SetEndDate(2024, 12, 31);
        SetCash(100000);
        SetBrokerageModel(BrokerageName.ClearStreet, AccountType.Margin);
        var symbol = AddEquity("SPY", Resolution.Daily).Symbol;
        _fast = EMA(symbol, 10, Resolution.Daily);
        _slow = EMA(symbol, 50, Resolution.Daily);
    }

    public override void OnData(Slice slice)
    {
        if (!_slow.IsReady) return;
        if (_fast > _slow && !Portfolio.Invested)
            SetHoldings("SPY", 1);
        else if (_fast < _slow && Portfolio.Invested)
            Liquidate();
    }
}

# Demonstrate Clear Street brokerage functionality with an EMA crossover strategy on SPY.
class ClearStreetDemoAlgorithm(QCAlgorithm):
    def initialize(self) -> None:
        self.set_start_date(2024, 9, 1)
        self.set_end_date(2024, 12, 31)
        self.set_cash(100000)
        self.set_brokerage_model(BrokerageName.CLEAR_STREET, AccountType.MARGIN)
        symbol = self.add_equity("SPY", Resolution.DAILY).symbol
        self._fast = self.ema(symbol, 10, Resolution.DAILY)
        self._slow = self.ema(symbol, 50, Resolution.DAILY)

    def on_data(self, slice: Slice) -> None:
        if not self._slow.is_ready:
            return
        if self._fast.current.value > self._slow.current.value and not self.portfolio.invested:
            self.set_holdings("SPY", 1)
        elif self._fast.current.value < self._slow.current.value and self.portfolio.invested:
            self.liquidate()

You must have an available live trading node for each live trading algorithm you deploy.

Follow these steps to deploy a live algorithm:

1. Open the project you want to deploy.
2. Click the Deploy Live icon.
3. On the Deploy Live page, click the Brokerage field and then click Clear Street from the drop-down menu.
4. Enter your Clear Street access token and account ID.

To generate your API credentials, see Account Types. Your account details are not saved on QuantConnect.

5. In the Region section, click the region where you want to run the algorithm.
6. Click the Node field and then click the live trading node that you want to use from the drop-down menu.
7. (Optional) In the Data Provider section, click Show and change the data provider or add additional providers.

Clear Street doesn't provide a live data feed, so use the QuantConnect data provider or another data provider for the securities you trade.

8. (Optional) Set up notifications.
9. Configure the Automatically restart algorithm setting.

By enabling automatic restarts, the algorithm will use best efforts to restart the algorithm if it fails due to a runtime error. This can help improve the algorithm's resilience to temporary outages such as a brokerage API disconnection.

10. Click Deploy.

The deployment process can take up to 5 minutes. When the algorithm deploys, the live results page displays. If you know your brokerage positions before you deployed, you can verify they have been loaded properly by checking your equity value in the runtime statistics, your cashbook holdings, and your position holdings.

The following table describes errors you may see when deploying to Clear Street:

If you need further support, open a new support ticket and add the live deployment with the error.