SMA 10/50 Trend on Alpaca
A faster moving-average crossover: hold while the 10-day average is above the 50-day. Deployed to your own Alpaca account — no code, your assets never leave the broker.
Setup on Alpaca
- Connect Alpaca with your API keys — paper and live accounts are both supported.
- Validate any strategy against Alpaca paper first: same rules, simulated money, live data.
- Promote to the live account when paper behavior matches the backtest.
- Each deployed strategy runs in its own sleeve with independent cash.
- Guardrails check every order: price bands, notional caps, and a global pause.
The strategy
- WHEN the market opens · IF not invested AND SMA(10) > SMA(50) · THEN buy with 98% of the sleeve
- WHEN the market opens · IF invested AND SMA(10) < SMA(50) · THEN sell the whole position
Good for: trending assets where multi-week swings are worth catching — leveraged index ETFs are a common pairing.
Watch out: several false signals a year is normal; each whipsaw costs a small loss and they add up in flat markets.
Strongest backtests for this strategy
| ETF | CAGR | max DD | trades |
|---|---|---|---|
| QLD | 19.6% | −32.4% | 17 |
| TQQQ | 19.1% | −53.2% | 18 |
| TECL | 17.4% | −62.4% | 16 |
| CLSE | 16.9% | −9.3% | 11 |
| SOXL | 16.7% | −72.2% | 17 |
| ROM | 13.4% | −43.5% | 16 |
| IAU | 12.4% | −18.1% | 15 |
| SPUU | 12.0% | −31.4% | 13 |
Top-8 by CAGR shown of 59 tested — hindsight selection; see the full table including the losers.
Build it from blocks (or type it in English), backtest it on 5.5 years of minute data in seconds, tweak any parameter, then paper trade it on live data. No card, no broker needed to start.
Frequently asked questions
How do I automate SMA 10/50 trend on Alpaca?
Connect Alpaca to DeployQuant (trade & read permissions only), pick the SMA 10/50 Trend template or describe it in English, backtest it on your chosen ETF, allocate cash, and confirm live trading. The strategy then runs every session in its own sleeve inside your Alpaca account.
Why 10 and 50 days?
A common intermediate-trend pairing — fast enough to react within weeks, slow enough to ignore single bad days. Both windows are editable parameters in DeployQuant.
Backtests are hypothetical, computed by DeployQuant's engine on minute-resolution consolidated US market data (2021-01-04 to 2026-07-17, $10,000 starting capital, no margin, fees and slippage not modeled) and do not guarantee future results. Nothing on this page is investment advice. Live trading involves risk of loss.