Robinhood Trading Bot with Python (Buy Low-Sell High Strategy)

By Tanner Abraham •  Updated: 09/11/22 •  9 min read

Stock values are highly unstable, changing substantially every single second in exchange platforms like Robinhood.

The key to beating such a volatile market is knowing when to buy and sell securities. Thus, you need to keep an eye on your trading gear constantly to succeed. 

This can be challenging since you might get distracted by other activities, given that trading might not be your only source of income. There are also chances that every time you leave your trading gear to attend to other needs, you miss profitable trades.

Robinhood trading bots are the solution. So what exactly are Robinhood bots, and how do they work? Read on to find out.

Table of Contents

What are Robinhood Bots?

Robinhood bots are automated software whose job is to trade on the Robinhood exchange platforms following specific algorithms.

Trading bots let you automate your trading process by relieving you of the obligation to spend all of your time in front of a computer screen.

You can securely modify and optimize your trade parameters in a virtual environment powered by historical market data.

A trading bot can automatically buy and sell stocks based on pre-set parameters. For instance, you may configure the bot to buy trades when the price is low and sell when the price goes up.

You can test your strategies using the historical data and simulations of the bot.

These bots allow you more free time and guarantee that your strategy will be carried out impartially and consistently even if you are not there. These bots allow you to trade stocks at any time of day and from any location in the world.

Robinhood has been at the forefront of many investment portfolios as one of the most well-known platforms for financial services.

On Robinhood, you can trade stocks around-the-clock with some restrictions when there is scheduled maintenance. Among stock brokerages, Robinhood is still one of the few that offers free trading, making it a unique offering.

How Robinhood Bots Works

The Robinhood bot functions precisely like any other algorithmic trading bot. It is both automatic and not automated trading.

Robinhood Bots compare with the guardian of the galaxy that never sleeps. They are ready to seize any promising trading opportunity and remain on standby as your personal stock broker.

Based on your precise instructions, these trading bots carry out stock trading tasks automatically for you. You merely designate a sum of money to invest in a resource at a predetermined interval.

For instance, if you set up a recurring investment to purchase $10 worth of ETH every Monday, Robinhood would do so on your behalf every Monday until you change the command.

The bots must follow the trade without winking.

For investors, a brief diversion from other obligations might result in significant gains or losses. As your guardians, these bots record those moments for you. The market and the automated mechanisms in use determine whether people buy or sell something.

Benefits of Robinhood Trading Bots

Setting different stop-loss amounts allows you to utilize bots as a hedge against market crashes.

Although it is a terrific strategy to balance your market exposure, maximize your earnings, and reduce your potential losses, using trading bots to spread your risk is by no means infallible.

Getting Started With Building Robinhood Bot in Python

For this process to begin, you need to have a basic understanding of Python. Because of its functional programming methodology, Python makes it simpler to create and assess algo trading systems.

It can be simply extended to dynamic trading algorithms and be used to create some excellent trading platforms.

Python’s rich library makes it the best programming language for creating bots. Use, understanding, and modification of the code are all straightforward.

For this project, we will be using the Robin-Stocks API library. This library provides a pure Python interface to interact with the Robinhood API.

You can use this library to build your own robo-investor or trading algorithm and view real-time data on stocks, options, and digital currencies.

The programmer creates a set of trading rules based on technical or fundamental analysis. These trading rules or algorithms are designed to help these trading bots to know when to buy and sell securities.

But for this project, we’ll create a buy-low, sell-high trading bot for Robinhood.

Steps to Building a Buy Low-Sell High Robinhood Trading Bot with Python

The first step is to verify the login process, after which you should sort for accessible stocks and save them in a Dataframe. Create the command that the bot will execute after that to conduct the transactions.

pip install robin_stocks
pip install python
pip install time
pip install datetime
pip install pyotp 

Step -1: Codes for Building Robinhood Bots in Python

The first example here shows how you can authenticate the login process to be able to interact with Robinhood.

import robin_stocks as robin

#pip install pyotp
import pyotp

account
#Start by setting up a 2-factor authentication process so you can have access to your 
#enter your Robinhood email and password
login_auth = robin.login('enteryourgmail@email.com', 'enterYourPassword')

#When you run this, it is going to ask you for a certain code, so for us to figure that code, go to the Robinhood website, click on setting
#Go to your Robinhood official webpage, click on account and settings, then security, click on authentication and turn it on.
# select the authentication APP and click next to receive your verification code. Remember to save it.

totp = pyotp.TOTP("my2factorApphere").now()
print("current OTP:", totp)

#Save the number 

#Save all the personal information in a text file in your VSC then read the file contents.

read_Personal_details = ('copy and paste the file path here').read().splitlines()
KEY = read_Personal_details[0]
EMAIL = read_Personal_details[1]
PASSWRD = read_Personal_details[2]
CODE = read_Personal_details[3]

totp = pyotp.TOTP(KEY).now()

login = robin(EMAIL,PASSWRD, mfa_code=CODE)

Step -2: Buy Low-Sell High Strategy

import robin_stocks as robin
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
from datetime import *
from config import *
import pyotp



read_Personal_details = ('Paste the text file path').read().splitlines()
KEY = read_Personal_details[0]
EMAIL = read_Personal_details[1]
PASSWRD = read_Personal_details[2]
CODE = read_Personal_details[3]

totp = pyotp.TOTP(KEY).now()

login = robin(EMAIL,PASSWRD, mfa_code=CODE)

#put thestocks in a data frame to display prices
my_stocks_info = robin.build_holdings()
df_container = pd.DataFrame(my_stocks_info)
df = df_container.T


#reset the index
df['ticker'] = df.index
df = df.reset_index(drop=True)
cols = df.columns.drop(['id','type','name','pe_ratio','ticker'])
df[cols] = df[cols].apply(pd.to_numeric, errors='coerce')


# set the buying and selling criterion
df_buy = df[(df['average_buy_price'] <= 20.000) & (df['quantity'] == 1.000000) & (df['percent_change'] <= -.60)]
df_sell = df[(df['quantity'] == 3.000000) & (df['percent_change'] >= .60)]

tkr_buy_list  = df_buy['ticker'].tolist()
tkr_sell_list = df_sell['ticker'].tolist()


# You can decide to run this once or have it run after some minutes 

#sell execution
if len(tkr_sell_list) > 0:
    for i in tkr_sell_list:
        print(i)
        print(r.orders.order_sell_market(i,4,timeInForce= 'gfd'))
else:
    print('Nothing to sell right now!')

#this code triggers the bot to buy when the condition is met
if len(tkr_buy_list) > 0:
    for i in tkr_buy_list:
        test = r.orders.order_buy_market(i,4,timeInForce= 'gfd')
        print(i)
        print(test)
        print(type(test))
else:
    print('Nothing to buy right now!')



# to automate this code so is runs afer X secs or minutes, but this is optional, 
import time

while True:
  if len(tkr_sell_list) > 0:
    for i in tkr_sell_list:
      print(i)
      print(r.orders.order_sell_market(i,4,timeInForce= 'gfd'))
  else:
    print('Nothing to sell right now!')

#this code triggers the bot to buy when the condition is met, this time after a set time
  if len(tkr_buy_list) > 0:
    for i in tkr_buy_list:
      test = r.orders.order_buy_market(i,4,timeInForce= 'gfd')
      print(i)
      print(test)
      print(type(test))
  else:
    print('Nothing to buy right now!')

  time.sleep(10)

Robinhood trading bots can be programmed to use additional trading techniques. However, it is important to weigh the risks and expenses involved with each strategy before choosing to use it.

Conclusion

Robinhood is one of the best exchanges where you can invest and trade different portfolios. Robinhood Bot helps you trade stock automatically, relieving you of the responsibility of staying up late to buy or sell stocks.

By using bots to automate trades, you can enjoy numerous benefits, including speed and emotionless trading, dollar-cost averaging, backtesting/paper trading, and more.

So one of the best moves you may be making if you trade on Robinhood is to create a trading bot. They make stock trading exciting and save you from any hassle of trading at odd hours. 

Tanner Abraham

Data Scientist and Software Engineer with a focus on experimental projects in new budding technologies that incorporate machine learning and quantum computing into web applications.