Stock Market Simulator?

[Seth Ellis]

I've recently become interested in using a stock market simulator. I
know absolutely nothing about the stock marekt, but I am learning
quickly. I've tried a lot of the more popular stock market simulators
such as http://tippingmonkey.com and http://investorpedia.com
However, in all cases I have found their tools to be somewhat
lacking. Many of the graphs suck, and you don't get to see real time
updates. Usually you have to refresh the page to see changes, and
even then their feeds are delayed 20-40 minutes.

I quickly found that Google Finance provides almost everything I've
been looking for. The only thing lacking is an interface geared
towards a simulator. For instance right now you have to edit
transactions and put in the price that you bought the stock for. The
simulator interface would have a screen to help you simply buy the
stock at current market price. I realized that using the Google
Finance API you could easily create a great stock market simulator.

I've done quite a bit of web development work (mostly PHP/MySQL), and
I thought it would be a great project to learn how to use API's. The
only thing is that I don't want to waste my time on something that's
already been done. I'm surprised that this isn't something someone
has already written. Do you know of any applications out on the web
that have some of these features, and use the Google Finance API?

[Doug Chimento]

Seth,
Not sure if this is relevant to you but...
A couple of us are working on adding the Finance API into the Zend Framework
(http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.gdata.html)
We have written some code and have some demos here:
http://code.google.com/p/zf-google-finance/
Keep in mind, this is very alpha code however, i do expect it to be
robust in a short period of time.

Let me know if you want more details.

- Doug

[Seth Ellis]

I really like the idea, but I don't know how useful it would be in making a stock market simulator.  Google already provides most of the functionality you need through the API.  In fact the only thing that it doesn't do is limit/stop orders.  These would require something like php and a cron job to do.  The bulk of the project would be creating the user interface assuming the API allows me to do what I want.

I created a mock up interface by cutting up pieces of different websites.  The PNG is attached to this message.  The final product would look extremely similar.  All I have really done is consolidated all of the great features of Google Finance into one page for the simulator.  This way the user can make all of the decisions they need to make without refreshing the page.  All of the elements are their own ajax panels that update independantly.  Functionality could also be added to reorder the windows, or minimize them.

The overview at the top shows you how well your simulation experience is going.  Here important information about your profile (such as rank) is shown.

A window providing information about how the market in general is doing is displayed at the top so you don't have to navigate away from the page to see info.

I changed some of the fields in the portfolio view that help you more accurately tell how much your stocks are actually making.  One of the most annoying things for me is having to go back and look at what I bought the stock for.  Here the adjusted cost base is right there along with how much you will actually make if you sell the stock now.  Tabs are added to show more information (like the current portfolio view in Google Finance).

Below your portfolio is a graph of all your portfolio stocks.  The panel to the right can show you discussions, and news items.  It irritates me right now having to open up extra tabs to be able to look at graphs, and my portfolio info at the same time.

Once you enter a symbol into the buy a new stock, detailed live information about that stock will show up to the right.  When you buy you do not have to update the page.

At the bottom you see the orders you have made.  The first one shows pending orders.  This includes things like stop losses, and limits that haven't executed yet.  Underneath is all of the transactions that have already taken place ordered by date executed.

[mychen]

Seth,

I like it. Simple yet elegant, and it looks like all of the pertinent
information users need are displayed clearly and made accessible. Can
you make that accessible?

Frankly, I'm surprised that Google hasn't bothered with this type of
implementation from an in-house perspective... Seems like it wouldn't
take too much resource to come up with something and live launch.

Definitely beats enduring the 10-20 minutes of lag/delay from my
previous (and current) experience with the trading simulation engines
from Investopedia and MarketWatch's Virtual Stock Exchange.

> On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 2:00 PM, Doug Chimento <dchime...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Seth,
> > Not sure if this is relevant to you but...
> > A couple of us are working on adding the Finance API into the Zend
> > Framework
> > (http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.gdata.html)
> > We have written some code and have some demos here:
> >http://code.google.com/p/zf-google-finance/
> > Keep in mind, this is very alpha code however, i do expect it to be
> > robust in a short period of time.
>
> > Let me know if you want more details.
>
> > - Doug
>
> > On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 1:56 PM, Seth Ellis <twd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I've recently become interested in using a stock market simulator. I
> > > know absolutely nothing about the stock marekt, but I am learning
> > > quickly. I've tried a lot of the more popular stock market simulators

> > > such ashttp://tippingmonkey.comandhttp://investorpedia.com

> > > However, in all cases I have found their tools to be somewhat
> > > lacking. Many of the graphs suck, and you don't get to see real time
> > > updates. Usually you have to refresh the page to see changes, and
> > > even then their feeds are delayed 20-40 minutes.
>
> > > I quickly found that Google Finance provides almost everything I've
> > > been looking for. The only thing lacking is an interface geared
> > > towards a simulator. For instance right now you have to edit
> > > transactions and put in the price that you bought the stock for. The
> > > simulator interface would have a screen to help you simply buy the
> > > stock at current market price. I realized that using the Google
> > > Finance API you could easily create a great stock market simulator.
>
> > > I've done quite a bit of web development work (mostly PHP/MySQL), and
> > > I thought it would be a great project to learn how to use API's. The
> > > only thing is that I don't want to waste my time on something that's
> > > already been done. I'm surprised that this isn't something someone
> > > has already written. Do you know of any applications out on the web
> > > that have some of these features, and use the Google Finance API?
>
>
>

> stocksimulator.png
> 422KViewDownload

[Seth Ellis]

I'm not sure what you mean by accessible.  I can put it on my webspace at http://www.enhancedperfection.com if we need to.  The issue is just getting all the javascript etc to work properly.  It's a big chunk of work.  I am thinking about starting a hosted google code project for it in a few days.