Support
Contact
Questions, feedback, or a bug to report? Email arrouse88@gmail.com — a real person reads these, and replies usually go out within a few business days.
If you’re reporting a wrong figure, please say which screen it was on, what the app showed, and what Alpaca’s own dashboard showed for the same moment. The two side by side is almost always enough to reproduce it.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an Alpaca account? To see your own figures, yes. Futures is a viewer for an account you already hold at Alpaca — it cannot open one for you. If you just want to see what the app does, tap Try the demo on the sign-in screen: it opens the whole app on invented figures, with no key pair and no network.
Where do I get an API key pair? From Alpaca’s own dashboard. Generate a key for the account you want to look at, and make sure the live/paper switch on the sign-in screen matches where that key came from — a paper key on the live setting will simply be rejected.
Can the app trade, or move my money? No. It only ever reads. There is no code in it that places, changes, or cancels an order, and a test enforces that on every build.
Where is my key pair kept? In the iOS Keychain on your device, readable only after the phone has been unlocked, and never synced or backed up elsewhere. Signing out deletes it. See the privacy policy.
What is the log, and do I need it? The log is the trading bot’s own record — the checks it ran, the orders it placed, and the reason it gave for each. It comes from the bot’s status service rather than from Alpaca, so it needs its own read-only token, which you generate on that service and paste into Settings. It is entirely optional: without it the app still shows your account, your positions and your returns, and simply leaves out the panels that describe the bot’s own reasoning.
Why does the daily recap need a passkey when nothing else does? Because it is the only thing the app does that writes. The read-only token can’t register a device for notifications by design, so switching the recap on signs you in to the bot’s service with a passkey and sends it the notification token iOS issued for your phone. The passkey never leaves your device. See the privacy policy for exactly what is sent and stored.
The recap has stopped arriving. Check iOS Settings › Notifications › Futures first: if notifications were turned off there, the app cannot deliver the recap and neither can the service — this is the one failure the sending side cannot see. The app says so itself, on the Settings screen and as a mark on the tab bar. Allow notifications again there, then switch the recap off and on in Futures — that is what re-registers the device.
Why does the header say “at close” sometimes? Because Alpaca keeps re-pricing your positions after the closing bell, using extended-hours trades. Once the market is shut the app switches to the session’s official closing figures instead, so the day’s change stops drifting hours after the day ended. The label tells you which basis you are looking at.
Why does a position show no holding period? Because Alpaca doesn’t send a purchase date. The app works the holding period out by matching sales back to the buys they closed, so a position whose every recorded buy has already been sold has nothing left to measure from.
What is the deposits figure in Settings for? The all-time return needs to know how much money you put in. Left blank, the app falls back to the account’s value at the point Alpaca’s history begins, which is only right for an account funded exactly once. If you have deposited since, enter the real total — otherwise the deposit reads as profit.