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Your First Automated Trade

This walkthrough takes you from a fresh account to your first automatically executed trade. It uses a paper account — real market data, virtual money — so nothing here risks a dollar. The whole setup takes about ten minutes.

What you'll do:

  1. Add an Atomik Paper account (no broker needed)
  2. Create a webhook strategy and get your webhook URL
  3. Activate the strategy on your paper account
  4. Point a TradingView alert at your webhook
  5. Watch the trade execute on the dashboard

Step 1: Add a paper account​

Everything happens on the Dashboard — chart on the left, your accounts and strategies on the right.

The Atomik dashboard: chart, trading panel, accounts and strategies

  1. In the Accounts panel (top right), click + Connect Account
  2. Choose Atomik Paper — a simulated account with $100,000 in virtual funds, no broker required

Broker selection: Tradovate, IB, TopstepX, and Atomik Paper

The new account appears in your Accounts panel as ATMK-… with a PAPER badge. Paper accounts run through the same execution pipeline as live accounts, so what you learn here transfers directly.

(If you'd rather connect a real broker first, see the Broker Connection Guide — Tradovate takes about two minutes via OAuth.)

Step 2: Create a webhook strategy​

  1. In the Strategies panel (bottom right), click + Create
  2. Choose Webhook Strategy — your signals will come from TradingView and POST to an Atomik webhook URL

Create a strategy: webhook or engine

  1. Pick Personal Use (you can share or monetize a strategy later — see the Marketplace guide)
  2. On the Configuration step, give the strategy a name (e.g. "My First Strategy"), pick the closest strategy type, and choose TradingView Pine Script as the signal source
  3. Review and create

When the strategy is created you get its webhook URL with an embedded secret. Copy it now — for security, the full URL with the secret is only shown at creation. It looks like:

https://api.atomiktrading.io/api/v1/webhooks/{token}?secret={secret}

Your webhooks are always visible in the Webhooks tab of the same panel, where you can check delivery logs later.

Step 3: Activate it on your paper account​

A strategy trades only when it's activated on a specific account:

  1. In the Strategies panel, click Activate
  2. Select your new webhook strategy as the signal source
  3. Select your paper account
  4. Set the quantity (start with 1 contract)
  5. Turn the strategy on

The strategy card now shows its symbol, account, and quantity, with a toggle to pause it any time.

Step 4: Point a TradingView alert at your webhook​

In TradingView (a paid TradingView plan is required for webhook alerts):

  1. Open a chart and create an Alert (for a first test, a simple price-crossing alert is fine)
  2. In the alert dialog, open the Notifications tab and enable Webhook URL
  3. Paste your Atomik webhook URL
  4. Set the alert Message to:
{"action": "BUY"}

That's the minimum payload — Atomik reads the action and executes with the quantity you configured in Step 3. For exits, partial exits, and strategy-driven sizing, see the Webhook Setup Guide.

Fire it manually

You don't have to wait for the market: you can test the pipeline with any HTTP client. Send a POST with body {"action": "BUY"} to your webhook URL and the trade executes immediately.

Step 5: Watch it execute​

When the alert fires:

  • The Positions tab (under the chart) shows the new open position
  • Your paper account card updates its Open P&L in real time
  • The Webhooks tab shows the delivery in the webhook's logs — this is the first place to look if nothing happened

To close the position, send the exit payload from another alert (or manually):

{"action": "SELL", "comment": "EXIT_FINAL"}

If nothing happened​

Check these in order — they cover nearly every first-time miss:

  1. Webhook logs (Webhooks tab) — did the request arrive? Any error message?
  2. Strategy is on — the toggle on the strategy card must be active
  3. Right account — the strategy must be linked to the account you're watching
  4. Payload is valid JSON — {"action": "BUY"}, straight quotes, no trailing comma

More cases in the FAQ.

Where to go next​

  • Webhook Setup — full payload reference: exits, partial exits, quantity from the alert
  • Broker Connection — connect Tradovate or a funded account when you're ready for live
  • Paper Trading — how the simulated account works
  • Strategy Builder — have AI write and backtest a strategy for you, no TradingView needed
  • Copy Trading — run one strategy across multiple accounts

Start on paper, verify the full loop end to end, and only then point a strategy at a funded or live account with small size.