Connect a broker or exchange
Live trading routes real orders to your own broker or exchange account. Stretus never holds your money. It places orders using credentials you connect. This page covers what to connect, what permissions to grant, the one permission never to grant, and the venue-specific traps.
You only need this for live trading.
The connection list is built dynamically
The connect screen builds its list from the platform's reference data at load time, filtered to the adapters enabled for your tenant. It is not a fixed list, and the set you see may differ from another user's.
The platform carries order-placement adapters for more than twenty brokers and exchanges. Each one exists as a row that can be enabled by a reviewed change rather than invented on demand, so "not available to you" means "not enabled for your tenant", not "not built".
If a broker you use is not offered, that is an entitlement question rather than a capability one. Ask support.
What adapters exist
Grouped by market. Availability to you depends on tenant activation.
Indian equity (NSE / BSE)
Upstox, Zerodha, AngelOne, Dhan, Fyers, Groww, 5paisa, Sharekhan, ICICI Direct and HDFC Securities, Kotak Neo, Motilal Oswal, Paytm Money and SBI Securities
US equity
Alpaca, note that live and paper are separate adapter rows, and the live one ships disabled by default. Alpaca paper uses paper credentials and is safe to enable; Alpaca live places real orders with real money, so enabling it is a reviewed change.
Other equity venues (LSE, Euronext, ASX, and similar)
Interactive Brokers, via the Web API and a TWS bridge. Venues and calendars exist; instrument coverage does not yet.
Crypto
Binance (spot, with separate futures and options adapters), Bybit, Coinbase, CoinDCX, Kraken, KuCoin, OKX, Gate.io, MEXC, Bitget, Upbit
FX
OANDA, the user-facing picker is disabled (ENABLE_FX_OTC_PICKER defaults off). See
Regulatory position.
Simulation
An internal paper adapter, which is what Stretus paper trading uses. It is not something you connect.
The authoritative per-venue picture (which broker reaches which market, currency, session and calendar) is on Markets & brokers.
Permissions
The most consequential paragraph on this page.
Grant: trading, and reading balances and orders.
Not on the key you give Stretus, and not on a key you give any third-party service. Stretus has no withdrawal code path and no reason to hold that scope. A trading key that is compromised can lose you money through bad trades; a withdrawal key can lose you the account.
A read-only key can see balances but cannot place orders, a strategy on one will appear to deploy and then reject every order.
Connecting an Indian equity broker
- Profile > Broker connections
- Choose your broker and start the connection flow
- Log in with the broker's own credentials and authorise Stretus
- Stretus stores the resulting broker token, sealed at rest, for order placement
Live equity deployments additionally require per-strategy broker approval before real orders are placed. Until approved, the strategy runs in paper even if live is selected. See Paper vs live.
Broker tokens are periodically refreshed. If live equity orders begin rejecting with an authentication error, reconnect from your Profile.
This matters more than it sounds. A strategy that cannot place orders cannot place exit orders. A token that expires while a position is open leaves that position unmanaged.
Connecting a crypto exchange
- In your exchange account, create an API key scoped for spot trading
- Enable trading permission, read-only keys cannot place orders
- Do not enable withdrawals
- In Stretus, Profile > Broker connections, choose the exchange, paste the key and secret
Once valid keys are connected, a crypto strategy can go live immediately on deploy. There is no approval gate.
Click live deploy with valid keys and the strategy starts placing real orders on the next candle close. Nothing sits between you and the market.
Alpaca: paper is a broker account, not Stretus paper
Alpaca issues separate credentials for its paper and live accounts, on different hostnames, a
paper key begins PK, a live key AK.
An Alpaca paper account places real orders that leave the platform and settles nothing. Stretus paper trading simulates fills internally and sends nothing anywhere.
Both are safe to experiment with. They are not the same mechanism, and the distinction matters when you are debugging why an order did or did not appear somewhere.
Interactive Brokers: one session per username
Web API, TWS, IBKR Mobile. All of them.
Signing in to IBKR Mobile while a strategy is deployed takes the session from the platform, and the platform will not take it back: re-authenticating would take it from you again, producing failures on both sides that look intermittent.
IBKR's own remedy is a separate username dedicated to API access, and that is the recommendation here.
Egress IP allowlisting
Some exchanges let you restrict an API key to specific source IP addresses. If you use that, and you should, you must allow Stretus's egress IP so orders are not blocked.
Stretus can assign your account a static egress IP for outbound orders. Request or view it under Profile > Egress, then add it to your exchange's API-key IP allowlist.
| If you | Then |
|---|---|
| Leave the key open (no IP restriction) | No egress step needed |
| Restrict the key to specific IPs | Add your Stretus egress IP to the allowlist |
Restricting the key and allowlisting the egress IP is the stronger configuration. A trading-scoped key locked to one source IP is a meaningfully smaller exposure than an unrestricted one.
Verifying a connection
Do this before you rely on it, not after a rejected order.
- Open Profile and confirm the connection shows as active
- Refresh your balance. See Capital model
- A successful balance read confirms the credentials work end to end
If orders are rejected after connecting, check in this order:
| Check | Symptom if wrong |
|---|---|
| Trading permission is enabled, not just read | Every order rejects on permissions |
| The egress IP is allowlisted, if you restricted the key | Every request rejects at the venue |
| Sufficient funds exist at the broker | INSUFFICIENT_BROKER_BALANCE |
| The token has not expired | Authentication errors |
| The strategy has broker approval, for Indian equity live | Orders route to paper instead |
What Stretus can and cannot do with the connection
| Can | Cannot |
|---|---|
| Place and cancel orders for your strategies | Withdraw or transfer funds |
| Read balances and order status | See accounts you did not connect |
| Read positions its own orders created | See trades you placed yourself |
Detail: Data, custody & security.
Disconnecting
A strategy with an open position and no working connection cannot exit. Close positions at your broker before disconnecting.
Next
- Paper vs live, including the broker approval flow
- How risk is enforced, read before your first live deployment
- Risk disclosure
- Markets & brokers