Trading the Markets With FOSS Software? 417
Robert writes "Along with many other techies, I share an interest in the world of finance (bubble-era stock options pulled me in). Unfortunately, as someone with a strong preference for GNU/Linux as my operating system of choice, I have found that software in this area seems quite sparse. For awhile I have made do with Python, R, Gnumeric, Gnucash and a telephone, along with some small utilities I have written myself. What I would like to know is: what FOSS software do you use for financial analysis, trading, system development, and testing in a Un*x environment? Are there programs you would like to see written or ported? Do any brokerages, data providers, or other services provide good support for we the few? And finally, what commercial entities do you know of that are using FOSS software in their operation?"
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
You can blame a lot on Bush, including the terrible budgeting since that's an executive job, but the economy, not so much. Not unless you're a tool of Nancy Pelosi and Reid. I know it's popular around here to blame everything on Bush, but get the facts. Be enlightened.
Re:The NYSE runs linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you have some facts skewed and some misplaced causality.
In 1999, Republicans wanted less regulation, causing investment banks to make create financial derivatives to hide risk and gain back their margins and bonuses, where normal banks could now compete.
Second of all, remember Bush touting the "Ownership Economy" where the sub-primes had artificially elevated the percentage of citizen's who lived in homes they owned?
Hardly sounds like a left-wing plot of the Democrats altering private banks attitude of lending via mind-control.
Less regulation, market forces, and human animus(greed, aggression, and fear), which if totally unchecked/balanced by other concerns can spell disaster.
Don't waste your time (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to sound like an ass but anyone who is that serious about trading needs to invest in a Bloomberg terminal [billpapa.org]. If you are just dinking around - that's one thing. But the summary seems to indicate you are looking for a "serious" trading platform. Don't waste your time with FOSS. FOSS has it's place but a trading platform is not it. Go with a proven solution.
There are plenty of "active trader" platforms out there from a variety of brokers. Most that I have see are Java apps. I run Schwab's web-based active trading on Linux all the time but even it is a simplified version of the real thing.
Also, one more thing to consider: I would hate to find out that my FOSS trading platform had a bug. If it's bad enough, it could be devastating and totally wipe you out. Do you really want to take on that kind of risk? This really isn't the place to be "testing" your trading platform when real dollars are at stake.
Now....analysis is a different beast. FOSS might have a place there. I don't know but I see no reason to reinvent the wheel when there are FAR better solutions already out there. I have yet to see anything from FOSS that is compelling. And no -- MS Money/Quicken imitators are NOT what we are talking about here. Not even close.
Re:What?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes you're the only one. The rest of us don't mistake open source to mean some anti-capitalist campaign but rather a way to make and distribute good software.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Bush is still culpable (Score:5, Insightful)
That, most definitely, happened on Bush's watch. The "laissez-faire" philosophy of the republicans sounds and looks a lot like Hoover right now. They have, literally, let Wall Street run itself. And you can see the end result on the front pages everyday. Whats the saying? Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Look, I am no regulation lover but even the staunchest of conservative economists recognize free markets must have some regulation to insure a fair playing field. Under this administration -- there has been NONE.
Do you realize that many firms were allowed to leverage up 30 to 1? Let me break down what that means for the
That is totally fucked up and should have never happened. End of story.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tech people interested in finance = backwards (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Read this 2003 NY Times article [nytimes.com] about Republican efforts to increase regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There is plenty of blame to go around. Here's a little snippet from the article:
Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
''I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,'' Mr. Watt said.
I'm not a proponent of either party - and so I think it makes it easier to see that they are both grossly incompetent for the most part.
Because Congress doesn't appoint them (Score:3, Insightful)
The executive branch appoints people to run institutions like the SEC, FCC, etc. Those people appointed have totally abdicated their responsibility to the people. The entire purpose of the SEC is to make it a "level playing field" with respect to financial disclosure and equity trading. It is not.
Why? Because nobody in those posts is enforcing ANYTHING. And they haven't for a very long time. Yes, Congress makes the rules. But if nobody enforces them, are they really rules?
Re:Web-based vs Desktop vs Palmtop (Score:3, Insightful)
have no idea what possible use Google (or anyone) could make out of knowing how much of which shares I own
Here's a freebie, despite not believing that they'd try it. With enough correlated stock portfolios they can get an advance look at the movement of volume for those people or at least project such movement. If the information is significant enough, they can alter their own trading strategies based on the extra statistics.
Not exactly something to make people stab eyes out, but its still an unethical possible use of such data. The power isn't in knowing YOUR data, it's in knowing a populations data.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
the housing bubble was primarily fueled by errors on Wall Street, not Washington.
There were three important Washington errors. Washington allowed banks to loan federally insured deposit money to companies with only securities (e.g. securitized mortgages) as a collateral. This put taxpayers on the hook and led to the Bear Stearns bail out.
The second Washington error was that even with the housing bubble, Washington left the reserve rate (how much banks have to hold of their deposits) at 15% rather than raising it. If they had raised the reserve rate, there would have been less money for loans and banks would have been more careful to whom they loaned it. As it was, banks were over capitalized and desperate to loan money.
The third Washington error was to make it more difficult to take bankruptcy. As a result, banks were more willing to loan money for over priced houses (figuring that they could grab other assets instead).
At the worst of the bubble, house prices were sixty percent over priced (using rental values for a comparison). House prices are still thirty percent over priced. They have more to fall before the market stabilizes. Unfortunately, most of the programs that are being launched are aimed at stabilizing house prices. This won't work until houses stop being over priced.
What Washington should be doing is helping house prices fall. One way that they could do that would be to amend bankruptcy laws back to their previous difficulty and add the ability for judges to adjust the principal of the loan down to the current value of the house. This would allow people to sell their houses after declaring bankruptcy (rather than taking a foreclosure). Too many people can't sell their houses because they owe more than the house is worth.
Re:Hmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
So, the Republicans were all hot to do something about the FMs in 2003.. Then they got control of both Congress and the Senate and did .... what? Nothing? It looks to me like their demands to something were primarily grandstanding.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
The federal reserve isn't owned by the US taxpayers. It's a private company.
Re:The NYSE runs linux (Score:4, Insightful)
That's nice, but I think he's more interested in analysis and management tools rather than actually running a stock market...
In a gold rush, the ones who sell mining tools are the ones who are guaranteed to make a profit.
Re:Tech people interested in finance = backwards (Score:1, Insightful)
fool.com is a great one for sure. Lots of easy to digest information.
What you need, my friend... (Score:2, Insightful)
No good FOSS trading platform (yet) (Score:3, Insightful)
what FOSS software do you use for financial analysis, trading, system development, and testing in a Un*x environment?
I am aware of TA-Lib [ta-lib.org], QuantLib [quantlib.org] and libraries implementing the FIX protocol [fixprotocol.org] to be used in commercial products and private Un*x trading applications.
Sadly, most people looking for a solid FOSS trading platform will find that they need to roll up their sleeve to get something decent working.
I have found that software in this area seems quite sparse.
Indeed. I closely monitor the FOSS community since 1998 for a trading platform. What I observed was a lot of well intended projects, but even to these days, none did reach satisfying maturity.
I think it relates to under estimation of the complexity. Most project starts with a lot of energy then goes idle because of unattainable short-term goals.
A general purpose platform will not emerge until someone put coherently together existing building blocks instead of starting yet another weak trading platform from scratch.
Example of building block is the FIX protocol. Many FIX libraries have matured. Quantlib is another solid example.
My contribution to the whole picture is TA-Lib. It is a set of functions for people who care about technical analysis (shameless plug).
\Mario
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the rub. Many businesses go out of business, some of them more spectacularly than others, and there was no mention of a government bailout of them now was there. It is the same asshats that scream "Free Market" when they perceive a wrong against the corporation that are now screaming to not allow the market to work as it should. AIG knew the market risks when they offered their IPO. Investors knew the risks when they purchased the stock. The company certainly knew the risks when it lobbied Congress to change the laws and lastly the Congress knew the risks when it deregulated everything at the behest of the company. Why should the public be forced to take on the risk these same asshats assumed solely because the asshats screamed "free markets" to get the regulations that would have protected the public voided and the agencies charged with oversight gutted? You didn't see AIG investors protesting the profits they were getting when times where better so why protest when they go belly up? It is corporate welfare pure and simple.
Re:The NYSE runs linux (Score:3, Insightful)