API responses are all in your local currency, with all calculations handled by Alpaca.

Further below, we will examine the some common scenarios with LCT. The recurring theme you will notice is that many of Alpaca’s API commands are almost the same, it is just the response that have changed. In some cases, barring the introduction of a currency specification or a swap rate, the only indication of the trade being in Local Currency is the inclusion of a USD second order JSON.

For further questions about LCT, such as supported currencies or any other relevant details, see LCT FAQs.

Supported Features

Features	LCT	Broker API (USD)
Allows trading in user's/broker local currency of US equities	✅	⛔️
Supports JIT	✅	✅
Stop and Limit orders	⛔️	✅
Swap rate on the orders endpoint	✅	⛔️
Supports crypto trading	⛔️	✅
Market Data	✅ (in local currency)	⛔️
Omnibus	✅	✅
Omnibus in subledger	✅	✅
Fully-disclosed account type	✅	✅
SSE Events	✅	✅
Rebalancing	⛔️	✅
Margin Trading	⛔️	✅

Get Market Data

With LCT, we have introduced a currency parameter for stock market data. You can request pricing data for any equity and we will handle the necessary convertions to quote the asset in the requested local currency.

The example below shows how to get pricing data for AAPL in Euro. The pricing information is converted from USD to the relevant local currency on the fly with the latest FX rate at the point in time of query.

curl --request GET 'https://data.alpaca.markets/v2/stocks/AAPL/bars?start=2021-05-01T0:00:00Z&end=2021-05-31T11:00:00Z&timeframe=1Min&currency=EUR'

{
    "bars": [
        {
            "t": "2021-05-03T08:00:00Z",
            "o": 109.58,
            "h": 109.87,
            "l": 109.58,
            "c": 109.69,
            "v": 4106,
            "n": 75,
            "vw": 109.72
        },
        ...
    ],
    "currency": "EUR",
    "symbol": "AAPL",
    "next_page_token": "QUFQTHxNfDIwMjEtMDUtMDRUMTI6NTA6MDAuMDAwMDAwMDAwWg=="
}

Note currency key value is EUR. Request the same endpoint without the currency parameter to compare the pricing data against its USD equivalent.

Create an LCT Account

For LCT, you can leverage the traditional Accounts API to create any of the following account types:

Fully Disclosed
Omnibus
Omnibus via the Alpaca Sub Ledger Solution

Below we provide an example of creating a account for a fully-disclosed setup with Euro as the local currency.

{
  "contact": {
    "email_address": "[email protected]",
    "phone_number": "555-666-7788",
    "street_address": ["20 N San Mateo Dr"],
    "city": "San Mateo",
    "state": "CA",
    "postal_code": "94401",
    "country": "USA"
  },
  "identity": {
    "given_name": "John",
    "family_name": "Doe",
    "date_of_birth": "1990-01-01",
    "tax_id": "666-55-4321",
    "tax_id_type": "USA_SSN",
    "country_of_citizenship": "USA",
    "country_of_birth": "USA",
    "country_of_tax_residence": "USA",
    "funding_source": ["employment_income"],
    "annual_income_min": "30000",
    "annual_income_max": "50000",
    "liquid_net_worth_min": "100000",
    "liquid_net_worth_max": "150000"
  },
  "disclosures": {
    "is_control_person": false,
    "is_affiliated_exchange_or_finra": false,
    "is_politically_exposed": false,
    "immediate_family_exposed": false
  },
  "agreements": [
   {
      "agreement": "customer_agreement",
      "signed_at": "2020-09-11T18:13:44Z",
      "ip_address": "185.13.21.99",
      "revision": "19.2022.02"
   },
   {
      "agreement": "crypto_agreement",
      "signed_at": "2020-09-11T18:13:44Z",
      "ip_address": "185.13.21.99",
      "revision": "04.2021.10"
    }
  ],
  "documents": [
    {
      "document_type": "identity_verification",
      "document_sub_type": "passport",
      "content": "/9j/Cg==",
      "mime_type": "image/jpeg"
    }
  ],
  "trusted_contact": {
    "given_name": "Jane",
    "family_name": "Doe",
    "email_address": "[email protected]"
  },
  "currency": "EUR"
}

Note the newly introduced currency parameter as part of the payload to create a new code.

Fund LCT Account

Accounts can be funded for LCT by either:

Bank Wire
Just in Time Cash
Just In Time

The below example funds one of our Euro accounts created above, with JIT API POST /v1/transfers/jit/transactions with the following body:

{
  "account_id": "27529bc0-3ab5-34f5-ac29-54a98162472d",
  "entry_type": "JTD",
  "currency": "EUR",
  "amount": "500000",
  "description": "Test JIT EUR"
}

Calling the above mentioned API yields the following response,

{
    "id": "9a0ab8c2-4575-46b6-a6cc-f280c899b756",
    "account_id": "27529bc0-3ab5-34f5-ac29-54a98162472d",
    "created_at": "2022-08-31T16:29:44-04:00",
    "system_date": "2022-08-31",
    "entry_type": "JTD",
    "amount": "500000",
    "currency": "EUR",
    "description": "Test JIT EUR"
}

Estimate Stock Trade

Customers using LCT for the first time may not be sure how much their local currency can buy of a US stock. To address this pain point we created the Order Estimation Endpoint. The customer can enter:

the security
the notional value
on the developer side you can input your swap rate to return the realistic value that your customer will receive.

We get in return indicative quantity, average price and USD value.

{
  "symbol": "AAPL",
  "side": "buy",
  "type": "market",
  "time_in_force": "day",
  "notional": "400",
  "swap_fee_bps": 45
}

The above payload will get an estimation for a market order to purchase AAPL stock with a notional amount of 400 EUR.

{
    "id": "b2f5f3f9-f6b9-4051-9e92-5872248f4830",
    "client_order_id": "b67e1ff9-794a-45b1-bd22-8d40f66c9f6a",
    "created_at": "2022-08-31T20:49:31.203137997Z",
    "updated_at": "2022-08-31T20:49:31.203137997Z",
    "submitted_at": "2022-08-31T20:49:31.200932908Z",
    "filled_at": "2022-08-31T20:49:31.200932908Z",
    "expired_at": null,
    "canceled_at": null,
    "failed_at": null,
    "replaced_at": null,
    "replaced_by": null,
    "replaces": null,
    "asset_id": "93f58d0b-6c53-432d-b8ce-2bad264dbd94",
    "symbol": "AAPL",
    "asset_class": "us_equity",
    "notional": "400",
    "qty": null,
    "filled_qty": "2.527276938",
    "filled_avg_price": "156.769502669363693758",
    "order_class": "",
    "order_type": "market",
    "type": "market",
    "side": "buy",
    "time_in_force": "day",
    "limit_price": null,
    "stop_price": null,
    "status": "filled",
    "extended_hours": false,
    "legs": null,
    "trail_percent": null,
    "trail_price": null,
    "hwm": null,
    "commission": "0",
    "swap_rate": "0.9948565977241001",
    "swap_fee_bps": "95",
    "subtag": null,
    "source": null,
    "usd": {
        "notional": "398.2483",
        "filled_avg_price": "157.58"
    }
}

Note the usd object at the bottom.

Submit a Stock Trade

Once having estimated a given order, we can actually commit to and execute the order using the usual Orders API.

We note here a few key LCT specific order attributes:

Order type - must always be market
swap_fee_bps - this is the correspondent spread. You as the correspondent can increase or decrease this as you require. Note: Alpaca will have a separate spread
Quantity-based orders will also be accepted

{
  "symbol": "AAPL",
  "notional": "400",
  "side": "buy",
  "type": "market",
  "time_in_force": "day",
  "swap_fee_bps": 100
}

The response for the purchase of AAPL worth 400 EUR can be seen below,

{
    "id": "5e9ead9b-c73d-47d3-abcf-14301b4bc44c",
    "client_order_id": "6125fce1-ecf3-4ea9-a020-2f97f237fbca",
    "created_at": "2022-08-31T20:51:30.710557089Z",
    "updated_at": "2022-08-31T20:51:30.710618479Z",
    "submitted_at": "2022-08-31T20:51:30.70808831Z",
    "filled_at": null,
    "expired_at": null,
    "canceled_at": null,
    "failed_at": null,
    "replaced_at": null,
    "replaced_by": null,
    "replaces": null,
    "asset_id": "93f58d0b-6c53-432d-b8ce-2bad264dbd94",
    "symbol": "AAPL",
    "asset_class": "us_equity",
    "notional": "400",
    "qty": null,
    "filled_qty": "0",
    "filled_avg_price": null,
    "order_class": "",
    "order_type": "market",
    "type": "market",
    "side": "buy",
    "time_in_force": "day",
    "limit_price": null,
    "stop_price": null,
    "status": "pending_new",
    "extended_hours": false,
    "legs": null,
    "trail_percent": null,
    "trail_price": null,
    "hwm": null,
    "commission": "0",
    "swap_rate": "0.9947972168892468",
    "swap_fee_bps": "150",
    "subtag": null,
    "source": null,
    "usd": {
        "notional": "396.0606",
        "filled_avg_price": null
    }
}

Get Account Position

The below position is the AAPL stock purchased previosly with 400 EUR.

[
    {
        "asset_id": "93f58d0b-6c53-432d-b8ce-2bad264dbd94",
        "symbol": "AAPL",
        "exchange": "NASDAQ",
        "asset_class": "us_equity",
        "asset_marginable": false,
        "qty": "2.5132",
        "avg_entry_price": "156.7700934095764032",
        "side": "long",
        "market_value": "393.969232",
        "cost_basis": "393.9945987569474165523984",
        "unrealized_pl": "-0.0253667569474165523984",
        "unrealized_plpc": "-0.000064383514463",
        "unrealized_intraday_pl": "-0.02536675694741652224",
        "unrealized_intraday_plpc": "-0.000064383514463",
        "current_price": "156.76",
        "lastday_price": "158.087157481573854921",
        "change_today": "-0.008395099910178",
        "swap_rate": "1.0048551416746259",
        "avg_entry_swap_rate": "0.9947972168892468",
        "usd": {
            "avg_entry_price": "157.59",
            "market_value": "392.0656974929108971",
            "cost_basis": "396.055188",
            "unrealized_pl": "-0.0252441928148389",
            "unrealized_plpc": "-0.000064383514463",
            "unrealized_intraday_pl": "-0.0252441928148389",
            "unrealized_intraday_plpc": "-0.000064383514463",
            "current_price": "156.0025853465346558",
            "lastday_price": "157.3233304236430846",
            "change_today": "-0.0083545374472457"
        },
        "qty_available": "2.5132"
    }
]

Journaling Local Currency

Journalling in LCT is almost exactly the same as our regular Journals API.

In this example we will journal some Euro between two accounts.

{
  "from_account": "51461a2a-8f98-3aa5-ae51-fad8d03037b3",
  "entry_type": "JNLC",
  "to_account": "27529bc0-3ab5-34f5-ac29-54a98162472d",
  "amount": "5000",
  "currency": "EUR",
  "description": "Test Euro Journal"
}

and the response

{
    "id": "1717b9c7-f516-4e85-a21b-bbeb7ef7a87a",
    "entry_type": "JNLC",
    "from_account": "51461a2a-8f98-3aa5-ae51-fad8d03037b3",
    "to_account": "27529bc0-3ab5-34f5-ac29-54a98162472d",
    "symbol": "",
    "qty": null,
    "price": "0",
    "status": "queued",
    "settle_date": null,
    "system_date": null,
    "net_amount": "5000",
    "description": "Test Euro Journal",
    "currency": "EUR"
}