Pseudo Account — Documentation

What is a pseudo account?

A pseudo account is a dummy name, or alias, for a real trading account. You can also think of it as a pointer to that trading account.

Key points:

The system creates one pseudo account for you automatically, with the same name as your trading account login id. If you are unsure which name to use when placing an order, use your trading account login id.
You can mark a pseudo account live or non-live. This enables or disables its mapped trading account.
All API functions work on the pseudo account.
One pseudo account maps to only one trading account.

Pseudo accounts are managed on the Nicknames screen — in AutoTrader Web, a pseudo account is shown as a nickname.

Why pseudo accounts exist

If you put a broker-specific trading account directly into your strategy code, you have to edit that code every time you want to change your stock broker. The pseudo account removes this problem.

You assign any meaningful name to a pseudo account, then map it to a real trading account in the system settings. When you need to change broker, you only remap the pseudo account to a trading account from the new broker. Your strategy code stays the same.

Example

Strategy code

placeOrder("DUMMY_ACC", "NSE", "BANKNIFTY_28-MAY-2020_CE_25000", "BUY", "LIMIT", "INTRADAY", 20, 230.55, 0);

Settings

Trading accounts

Login id	Stock broker
ABC123	Zerodha
XYZ321	Upstox

Pseudo accounts

Pseudo account	Mapped trading account
DUMMY_ACC	ABC123

The pseudo account DUMMY_ACC is currently mapped to the Zerodha trading account, so the strategy runs in the Zerodha account.

To switch, remap DUMMY_ACC to the Upstox trading account. The same strategy now runs in the Upstox account, with no code changes.