Stock Trading Language [S.T.L.]

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Stock Trading Language S.T.L.

• Rui Hu
• Thomas Lippincott
• Rekha Duthulur
• Matt (Yu-Ming) Chang
• Nikhil Jhawar

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Birth of S.T.L.

• Wanted to develop a language for non-techies who
  do not know how to program.
• English language considered to be the easiest way
  to introduce programming to one and all, but
• English with its vast grammar and millions of
  different permutations and combination of words
  in its domain would require a great deal of time
  and effort for any language to parse and make
  sense of it.
• Hence, we decided to restrict our easy-to-program
  language to a particular domain to be able to
  capture the essence of our idea and still
  generate a language capable of dealing with
  non-programmers.
• The domain was chosen to be as the one belonging
  to the financial industry, more specifically
  Stock Trading
• Intended users day to day retail traders
  looking to bring some automation into their
  dealing with the stock market.

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Language Definition

• STL is an interpreted computer language designed
  to facilitate the rapid prototyping of stock
  trading strategies. The language is mainly aimed
  at individuals in the financial industry, with
  little or no formal background in computer
  science.

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Language Highlights

• Goal The goal of the Stock Trading Language is
  to enable a stock trader to write code to trade
  in the stock market to automate his
  buying/selling requirements.
• Ease of use The language is user friendly in the
  sense that traders can write simple buy/sell
  codes using simple words which they use in their
  financial dialect.
• Portability The language is also very portable
  as the user written code is converted into java
  code thus enabling it to be compatible with any
  machine running the Java Virtual Machine.
• Automation The language brings about automation
  for a trader who would have to otherwise sit in
  front of the computer for the whole time of the
  trading session.

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Implementation Responsibilities

• Tom Lead Tester, GUI, JFL Interfacing
• Nikhil Project Management, Testing,
  Documentation
• Rekha Interpreter, walker, AST
• Rui Lexer, Parser
• Matt Interpreter, walker, AST

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Implementation - Architecture
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Implementation - Schedule
Date Completed Task
31 January,2007 First Team Project Meeting
02 February,2007 Stock Trading Language Evolves
07 February,2007 White Paper completed
11 February,2007 Code conventions formed
14 February,2007 Lexer started
18 February,2007 Parser started
21 February,2007 Walker started
01 March,2007 Interpreter over Compiler chosen
05 March,2007 Language Reference Manual completed
20 March,2007 Graphical User Interface started, Lexer/Parser Completed.
25 March,2007 Testing of Java and STL code started
April 5,2007 Bugzilla (for error reporting) implemented
April 19,2007 Simple demo with TA
April 26,2007 Walker finalized
April 29,2007 Graphical User Interface completed
May 5,2007 Testing of STL functionality completed
May 6,2007 Final project completed
May 7,2007 Project presented
Chose interpreter over compiler
Implemented grammar early
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Examples Conditional buy

• imoney(10000) //Set the amount of money you
  have
• jvalue("MSFT") //Assign currently traded
  value of Microsoft to a variable
• max400 //Set acceptable price limit on a
  stock
• if(jltmax)
• buy(50,"MSFT") //If the price is favorable
  buy 50 stocks of Microsoft else error out
• kstocks("MSFT") //assign the number of
  stocks of Microsoft currently owned to a variable
  
• print("You currently own ")
• print(k)
• print(" stocks of Microsoft")
• print("\n")
• else
• print("Stock too costly...")
• lstocks("MSFT")
• sell(20,"MSFT") //sell 20 shares of Microsoft
  from your current portfolio
• jstocks("MSFT") //reassign the no. of stocks
  of Microsoft currently owned to a variable
• print("After selling You currently own ")
• print(j)

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Examples - Delta

• / Program which allows traders to buy stocks
  based on their volatility /
• imoney(1000)//Set money for transactions
• //Choose your portfolio
• _at_portfolio"IBM","GOOG","YHOO","CECO","MSFT"
• print("Delta Values\n")
• print("-------------------------\n")
• //Prints out the delta values of each stock in
  your portfolio
• foreach iterate(_at_portfolio)
• print(iterate)
• print(" ")
• print(delta(iterate))
• print("\n")

/Go through the list and buy only stocks which
have variance that is acceptable/ foreach
read(_at_portfolio) if(delta(read)lt0.5) buy(10
,read) print(read) print("
bought\n") else //Else do not
buy print(read) print(" too volatile to
buy\n")
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Example - Recursion

• function gcd(x,y)
• if(ylt0)
• return(x)
• else
• while(x gt y)
• x x - y
• return(gcd(y,x))

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The GUI
Open code from a file
Clear input screen
Money you have
Run all tests
Portfolio Manager
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Lessons learnt - general

• Starting early does not hurt
• Set realistic goals in terms of envisioning the
  project and allocating time for the various
  components that go into building a project
• Team mates should get to know each other well for
  optimal results
• Good communications an absolute MUST
• Work together at least once every week if not
  more

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Lessons learnt - technical

• Divide project components properly based on
  strength and weaknesses of team members
• A fixed LRM and Grammar go and long way in
  stabilizing the project development cycle
• Realize, what will be more appropriate for the
  project an interpreter or a compiler
• Perform tests on every module as it is developed
• Scoping is difficult to implement, so allocate
  enough time to get it working

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DEMO TIME!