wtf is pyalgotrade?

PyAlgoTrade is a free Python toolkit that helps you test and run automated trading strategies. Instead of manually buying and selling stocks or cryptocurrencies, you write code that defines your trading rules, and the software applies them to market data on your behalf. The most common use is "backtesting", replaying historical market data through your strategy to see how it would have performed before you risk any real money. The project works by processing market events in sequence: each new price tick or data point triggers your code to evaluate whether to buy, sell, or hold. You can feed it historical price data from common CSV files like those from Yahoo Finance or Google Finance. Beyond simulated backtesting, it also supports "paper trading" (simulated trades using live market data) and actual live trading of Bitcoin through the Bitstamp exchange. The target users are individual algorithmic traders, finance students, or hobbyists who want to experiment with automated trading strategies using Python. For example, if you believed a certain combination of moving averages and the RSI indicator could predict stock movements, you could encode that logic, test it against years of historical data, and measure the results using built-in performance metrics like the Sharpe ratio. A major caveat: the project is officially deprecated and no longer maintained. The developers recommend looking at an alternative project called Basana for new work. PyAlgoTrade also relies on older versions of Python (2.7 and 3.7), so its real-world viability for modern live trading is limited. It is best treated as a learning resource for understanding how algorithmic trading systems work rather than a production-ready tool for managing live capital today.