Weekly Entry + 7% Target on Alpaca
Buy at the first open of each week, rest a +7% profit target, and cut the trade Thursday afternoon if it's losing. 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 first session of the week opens · IF not invested · THEN buy with 98% of the sleeve (once per week)
- WHILE invested · a managed limit order rests at entry price × 1.07
- WHEN it's 2:00pm on the week's second-to-last session · IF the position is losing · THEN sell everything
Good for: volatile assets that regularly swing 7% within a week — leveraged ETFs are the natural habitat.
Watch out: the time-based exit realizes many small losses by design; the wager is that the +7% winners outnumber them, which the per-ETF results test directly.
Strongest backtests for this strategy
| ETF | CAGR | max DD | trades |
|---|---|---|---|
| TECL | 34.9% | −45.0% | 242 |
| SOXL | 32.9% | −71.4% | 272 |
| SOXX | 30.3% | −22.8% | 168 |
| QLD | 25.2% | −44.5% | 185 |
| FAS | 22.5% | −47.8% | 208 |
| SSO | 21.5% | −28.5% | 143 |
| TQQQ | 21.3% | −54.2% | 217 |
| ROM | 20.5% | −48.0% | 114 |
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 weekly 7% target on Alpaca?
Connect Alpaca to DeployQuant (trade & read permissions only), pick the Weekly Entry + 7% Target 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 exit on Thursday?
It's a deadline, not a signal: the template refuses to hold a losing trade over the weekend gap. On holiday-shortened weeks DeployQuant's calendar logic shifts the exit to the week's second-to-last session automatically.
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.