What is missing in Financial Software?

[Watcher1400]

Just curious to see what people here think may be missing for investors in terms of financial software.

With cloud computing and cheapers data, I feel like there is a lot of opportunity for innovation and disruption in the financial software area.

Curious to know what you guys think?

 

[trendie]

could you give your own views as to what constitutes an innovation and disruption?

what is financial software? share prices, news, investor sentiment?

does financial software extend to forex?

 

[Watcher1400]

could you give your own views as to what constitutes an innovation and disruption?

what is financial software? share prices, news, investor sentiment?

does financial software extend to forex?

As someone who has been actively trading for 3-4 years (currencies, options, futures), I've noticed that, even in the short time I've been around, there have been some major changes in making financial tools cheaper and more accessible.

Quick examples include Tradingview.com and the Trade Interceptor iPhone app (has live, free streaming charts of all currencies and recently added S&P500, NASDAQ, OIL).

I look at the financial data space and I see a lot of opportunity for disruption (Bloomberg and Reuters control 2/3rd of that 25 billion dollar industry). A Bloomberg terminal still costs 25,000 per year, and yet it is essentially access to data and news. I feel that cloud computing, web apps and new big-data management techniques could deliver a lot of what the big guys do at 1/10th the price (biggest problem would be the exchanges).

I also see a lot of potential in the idea that a lot of the retail crowd is getting fed up with under performing mutual funds & money managers and are looking for alternatives. I look at a lot of 20-somethings (myself included) and wonder how they will be saving and investing in the next 10-20 years..

Full disclosure- I'm involved in a startup in the finance space (online financial analytics platform currently under development), so I am kind of talking my own book, but I do think there is a lot of room for innovation (I could list off some of the companies I feel are doing interesting stuff in the space if anyone is interested)

I was just curious to see what people here thought about the subject.

 

[Beast Of Bodmin]

For me, the availability of historical daily NAVs for mutual funds for downloading is missing.

 

[neil]

For me, the availability of historical daily NAVs for mutual funds for downloading is missing.

I know the Bodmin area -did you once live there

 

[Shakone]

3-D charting, (volume, price, time) bars

 

[tanyach]

3-D charting, (volume, price, time) bars

That's a very interesting idea, I've never thought about it. Have you already seen it any trading softaware? Please, provide here examples, if it really exists.

 

[ast4]

I've been trying to find a reasonable front end software solution all weekend and have still turned up empty handed unless I want to use bloomberg's EMS or something in that ballpark. So I'll tell you what it's lacking, a complete software suite that does the following:

-Broker-agnostic (FIX compliant)
-Multi-asset (equites/options/futures/FI)
-Position breakdown at the strategy/sub-strategy level, RT/Historical. (this one is key)

Sounds simple enough, but haven't been able to find anything decent. Some stuff supports the strategy level reporting (e.g. OpenQuant, IQBroker) but lacks the ability to deal with options. It's somewhat frustrating.

 

[Pat494]

The charting software is all much the same with the same indicators etc. etc.

A switched on person will break through this mediocre stuff soon , but will want big bucks for it I suspect.

 

[tedgregory]

Gentlemen, does anybody deem that it all goes to top-level versatility? I mean that, maybe the future is a web-based framework with a configuration wizard to enable choosing any connection, charts type, datafeed, and some API below for custom addons...
What about pricing model evolution? Does it follow or turning it's own path?

 

[ast4]

Gentlemen, does anybody deem that it all goes to top-level versatility? I mean that, maybe the future is a web-based framework with a configuration wizard to enable choosing any connection, charts type, datafeed, and some API below for custom addons...
What about pricing model evolution? Does it follow or turning it's own path?

As for as flexibility goes, I think what would be nice to see is being FIX compliant to achieve broker neutrality and connectors for at the broker level for a strong subset of retailish brokers. Same with plugins for datafeed, as well as a built-in CSV and HDF5 support for data reads (I know plenty of people who store their data in either format). Multi-asset support is integral as well.

I think integrating OMS type features into an EMS front-end is really going to be the new frontier as I alluded to earlier in the thread. For example, no software vendor who build EMS front-ends really offer strategy level reporting. I've never built front-end software or OMS software so I clearly don't fully understand the complexities involved here. However, I'd assume that if you could build a paper trading type system implementing what I'm talking about shouldn't be difficult at all.

 

[subarashi]

It's about time charting packages incorporated some statistical analysis ability, particularly Bayesian methods. Right now I code in Haskell to do this.

 

[ast4]

It's about time charting packages incorporated some statistical analysis ability, particularly Bayesian methods. Right now I code in Haskell to do this.

I don't think there's much point, typically software developers have no real statistical backgrounds and also when new measures come up it's not coded in and you have to revert back to what you were previously using. The closest thing to what you're talking about that I know of is probably Palantir's financial software, they use some proprietary language for you to add new metrics in.

I've found R to be more than sufficient to fit my needs on this end, it's very flexible as well with a good open source backing so most modules have been extensively tested. Python + Pandas + matplotlib would fit the bill as well. The only real downside to R is that it has poor memory management so loading large datasets could bog down your system. Our R&D machine is a 12 core xeon w/ 64 GB of RAM and at times we have gotten close to using 100% of RAM to give you a sense.