With the rise of robo-advisors and automated investing platforms, automating your investments on TD Ameritrade has never been easier. By setting up automatic investments, you can put your portfolio on autopilot and remove emotions from investing decisions. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore 5 proven methods to automate your TD Ameritrade account, including setting up automatic deposits, using prebuilt model portfolios, configuring trade triggers, building automated trading systems with APIs, and employing robo-advisors. Automating parts or all of your investing strategy can save time, instill discipline, and potentially improve returns over the long run. Let’s dive in and discover how automation can work for your TD Ameritrade portfolio.
Leverage Automatic Deposits and Dollar-Cost Averaging
The simplest way to automate investing on TD Ameritrade is by setting up automatic recurring deposits from your bank account into your brokerage account. Known as dollar-cost averaging, this strategy lets you make regular contributions that purchase stocks and funds at different price points over time. To set this up, log into your TD Ameritrade account, navigate to Transfers & Payments > Automatic Investing, and schedule the amount and frequency of automatic deposits. You can then deploy the funds into stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, etc. Dollar-cost averaging helps avoid the pitfalls of market timing and injects discipline into your investing habits.
Build a Hands-off Portfolio with Model Marketplaces
For totally hands-off investing, TD Ameritrade’s Model Marketplaces allow you to invest in prebuilt portfolios aligned to goals like retirement, income generation, and socially responsible investing. Powered by asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard, these models automatically rebalance across asset classes and positions. To use them, simply fund your account, pick a model portfolio strategy, and set up automatic investing if desired. The models handle all the investment selection and trading on your behalf. They provide instant diversification and are ideal for beginner investors looking for a completely automated solution.
Configure Advanced Trade Triggers
Savvy investors can take automation to the next level on TD Ameritrade by using trade triggers. Conditional order types like stop losses, trailing stops, and bracket orders let you pre-program trades to execute automatically when price or other criteria are met. For example, you could set a stop-loss to trigger if a stock drops 10% below what you paid. Trailing stops track favorable moves and lock in gains. Bracket orders combine profit-taking and stop-losses in a single trade. Trade triggers are powerful for risk management and removing emotions during market swings.
Build Automated Trading Systems and Algos
Those with coding skills can fully automate their TD Ameritrade trading by building algorithmic systems and bots. TD Ameritrade offers APIs for major programming languages like Python, Java, C#, and more. Connect your code to streaming market data and trade execution endpoints. Backtest strategies with historical data. Build automated strategies based on indicators, technical analysis, machine learning models, or any other logic. While complex, algo trading grants full control to coders and quants. Deploying auto trading systems on TD Ameritrade requires care – test thoroughly before using with real capital.
Employ TD Ameritrade’s Robo-Advisor Offering
For zero hands-on investing, TD Ameritrade offers an integrated robo-advisor called Essential Portfolios. The fully automated Essential Portfolios service builds and manages diversified ETF portfolios tailored to your goals. It provides automated account opening, asset allocation, portfolio selection, automatic rebalancing, and tax-loss harvesting. Fees are reasonable at 0.30% annually. Essential Portfolios makes automated investing available to everyone on the TD Ameritrade platform with no trading or technical skills required.
Automating all or parts of your TD Ameritrade investing can remove emotion, impose discipline, save time, and potentially boost long term performance. From simple automatic deposits to complex algo trading systems, TD Ameritrade offers solutions for investors at all technical skill levels to put their accounts into autopilot mode and stick to their long term plans.