Thirteen strategies
Each with its own rules and sound, from five-minute surges to low-float runners.
Open source · shipped daily
Momentum trading,
Momentum trading,
on a desk you own.
Nova is a free, open-source trading workstation for Interactive Brokers. A live scanner, high-of-day alerts, multi-timeframe charts, Level 2 and Time & Sales, practice venues and a safety-first order path, running on your machine.
- MIT licensed
- Runs on your PC
- Your keys stay local
- Paper & Sim practice built in
Every screenshot shows Nova Marketing Sample Data, not a live market or a real account.
Built on
- Interactive Brokers API
- Python 3.13
- FastAPI
- React 19
- TypeScript
- TradingView Lightweight Charts
- Electron
Scanner
Every mover, the moment it moves.
Persistent IBKR scanner rosters for Gappers, Gainers, Losers, After Hours and Large Cap. Each row carries what you need before you click: gap, relative volume, float, short interest, news and halts.
- A name is on the board before its first tick arrives
- One-click filters for gap, float, relative volume, news and halts
- Catalysts classified from SEC filings and press wires, not guessed
- A watch list that taps you on the shoulder when a name moves
HOD Momo
Know the second a stock makes a new high.
HOD Momo watches every name on your desk and fires when one breaks its high of day with the volume to mean it. A master gate keeps untradeable names off the board, and bursts fold into one alert instead of a wall of noise.
The numbers on the alert
Change, relative volume, float, gap, volume and momentum, right where the alert fires.
Alerts off the glass
Discord, Telegram and webhook alerts, plus toasts for the names on your watch list.
Trader View
Four timeframes. One glance. Zero guesswork.
Ten-second, one-minute, five-minute and daily charts side by side, with VWAP, EMAs, MACD, session shading and drawing tools. The day's support and resistance are drawn where they matter, so you never trade into a wall you didn't see.
Store-first charts
Bars paint from the local store instantly; IBKR history fills in behind, never blocking a click.
Levels that matter
High of day, premarket high, VWAP, round numbers and tested tops, measured before they were drawn.
Hotkeys for speed
Bind any Nova action to a key, or import your DAS Trader hotkeys in one step.
Level 2 & Time & Sales
See what the book is hiding.
A depth ladder and tape built for speed. Nova watches the book for you: size that was pulled versus size that actually traded, hidden sellers soaking up buyers, and every print colored by where it hit.
- Pulled and traded size marked right on the ladder
- Hidden buyers and sellers outlined where they hold
- Your entry, stop and target shown inside the book
The plan
A plan before every trade.
Nova reads the stock with you: the setup forming on the chart, an entry, a stop and a 2:1 target sized to the risk you set, and every reason not to take it, in plain words. Then you choose who trades it.
- Setups drawn on the chart as they form, fail or trigger
- Seven signal tiles: in play, setups, momentum, tape, short, float, halts
- You, Nova with your approval, or Nova alone in practice
The whole desk
Practice hard. Automate carefully. Review everything.
Three venues on one feed, bots that start on a leash, and a record of every decision.
Paper
A practice account on the live feed
Real-time market data, fake money. Fills are estimated locally with broker-style commissions, and nothing is ever sent to a broker.
Sim
Replay any recorded day
Load a recorded session and trade it again. Scrub backwards and every later order unwinds, exactly as if it never happened.
Bots
Automation on a leash
Off, Eyes or Strategy per setup. Loss breakers, a kill switch, and bots that never touch Live.
Cryptos
The 24/7 market at a glance
Coins, funding, flows and the stocks that move with crypto, on one read-only board.
Diagnostics
A desk that checks itself
A checklist of facts about Gateway, data lines, recorders and drives, each with its fix.
Contenders
The day's names, ranked
Five pillars per stock, a score, the setup live on each name, and who is allowed to trade it.
Setups
Every setup, as it forms
Four setup scanners on every name: state, trigger, stop, target, distance, the tape's verdict and a grade.
- Session Record of prints and Level 2
- Screen recording and share clips
- P&L calendar, R-multiples, drawdown
- Catalyst classifier
- “Why it’s moving” read
- Watch list toasts
- Desktop app with auto-update
- Ctrl+F on every screen
Safety
Safety is the default, not a setting.
Every order, from your clicks, your hotkeys or Nova's bots, passes through one door with the same checks. Live trading is locked behind your PIN, and getting flat is never blocked.
Local-first
No cloud. No subscription. No middleman.
The engine binds to 127.0.0.1. Market data comes straight from your own IB Gateway, and your recordings, ledgers and logs stay on your drive.
Try it
Click around the real desk. No broker required.
The live demo runs the whole desk in your browser on Nova Marketing Sample Data: the scanner, the charts, Level 2, the plan, the bots and the replay. Nothing is installed, and nothing you click is sent anywhere. To run the same demo yourself, you need only Node.js 20.
# clone and build the demo
$ git clone https://github.com/aaltaay/Nova.git
$ cd Nova/frontend
$ npm install
$ npm run build:demo && npm run preview:demo
# then open it
→ http://localhost:4173/demo/Built in the open
Engineered like it handles real money. Because it does.
Every change ships through a pull request with its reasoning written down. Every release is built and published by CI, and the desktop app updates itself.
Tested where it matters
pytest covers the engine, Vitest covers the desk, and Playwright drives the real interface in a browser.
Decisions written down
Every structural choice is an architecture decision record, and a written constitution is enforced by a gate in CI.
Every change explained
Each pull request records what changed, why, and how it was verified. CI builds and publishes every release.
AI × the tape
How AI is actually being used to trade.
A shortlist of the current beat: execution algos, quant desks and the regulators watching them. Press releases and "AI stocks to buy" lists are filtered out on purpose. Full feed
-
Interactive Brokers rolls out autonomous AI trading
-
Quant salaries on the rise amid AI revolution
Remuneration for quantitative finance professionals has continued to rise despite the increased use of AI, according to recently published research.
-
Chinese quant fund Lingjun attracts $300m in overseas capital
Chinese quantitative hedge fund Lingjun Investment has secured more than $300m from international investors as it resumes fundraising following a two-year suspension prompted by regulatory...
-
Bessent dismisses systemic AI risks at private hedge fund investor gathering
US Treasury Secretary and former hedge fund manager Scott Bessent has dismissed concerns that the artificial intelligence investment boom poses a systemic risk to financial markets, despite...
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AI Agents Trading Stocks While You Sleep? Charles Schwab’s CEO Is Skeptical
Homepage shortlist -- not the full desk. Full feed → Ranked by source, topical depth, and recency. Updated .
Is Nova free?
Yes. Nova is open source under the MIT license. There is no subscription and no hosted service to pay for.
Which broker does it work with?
Interactive Brokers, through IB Gateway on your machine. Market data and Live orders use your own IBKR account and data subscriptions.
Will Nova trade for me?
Only when you ask it to, and only in practice. Nova's bot trades the Paper and Sim venues. Live orders stay yours: unattended live trading is rejected in code, and arming Live needs your PIN.
Do I need IB Gateway to try it?
No. The live demo runs the whole desk in your browser on sample data, with no broker, no keys and no backend.
Which platforms does it run on?
Windows is the supported desktop, with an installer that updates itself. The engine is Python and the desk is a web app, so you can also run it from source in a browser.
Where does my data go?
Nowhere. The API binds to 127.0.0.1, and recordings, ledgers and logs stay on your drive. Optional services such as news and earnings are read-only.
Is this investment advice?
No. Nova is software. You are responsible for your account, its permissions and every order you send.
Build your edge on a desk you own.
Star the repo, read the code, or click around the live demo right now.