Stock Trading, yay !

On stock trading

Stock trading is fun.. well, when you make money of course. There are days when you wish you didn’t buy that crappy stock, today it’s intel.
They released apparently bad numbers yesterday and took the plunge:


Uh oh !

Invest Applet

This leads me to the introduction of Invest, a replacement/companion for gtik, the stock ticker currently in gnome applets.

Logo
Feel the Tango love

It allows one to create a portfolio, and track its progress in terms of gain/losses.
It also features a yahoo graph viewer, with the options found on their website, very nerdy !

Screenshots

In the panel
The panel applet, with the overview dropdown
Charts
The Yahoo! chart viewer, with 1337 options
Portfolio
The portfolio editor, note the particularly bad taste of mine..

Code

This is the first release, nothing official yet, but i know there are people who like these things.
I have discussed with Christopher Aillon and he gave me really nice ideas for future developpment.

Maybe this can be integrated in gnome 2.16, if I receive positive feedback 🙂

Download the invest-applet-0.1.0.tar.gz tarball !

Contribute !

I welcome any patch/comment/suggestions. The future applet will have a color indicator instead of numbers in the pane, to take les space and be less anti-private, in case someone is looking over your shoulder. Further improvements also include gconf usage and maybe general applet polishing.


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50 responses to “Stock Trading, yay !”

  1. Lars Strojny Avatar

    Hey Guy, you’re great. I’m not involved in that stock-stuff, but this applet seems to be motivating to do so 😉

  2. chap Avatar
    chap

    Nice idea! I just got into that (finance) a few days ago, but into mutual funds, not stocks. I don’t know if the support for mutual funds would be any different (probably). It sure would be a nice addition anyway 😉

    Great work 🙂

  3. Jakub Steiner Avatar

    Happy to see the adoption of the tango style among the developer crowd. Yay!

  4. Z Avatar
    Z

    Récolter le fruit de son travail, c’est juste. Récolter le fruit du travail des autres, ça ne l’est pas. Tu pourrais peut-être employer ton énergie à autre chose que l’amélioration d’un outil à répandre la merde, non ?

    Et si tu veux vraiment faire un bon placement, fais un don à la FSF… 😉

    (feel free to translate…)

  5. Albert Avatar

    Hey! Great work with this new tool!

  6. liberforce Avatar
    liberforce

    Salut kiki, comment ça va depuis cette nuit ? 😉
    Bon bin je peux déjà te faire une remarque “commission” ça prend 2 “m” :-p
    @+

  7. noah Avatar
    noah

    Hi,

    This is great work, and I encourage you to continue it. I only wish I had time to help code. I can, however, help test, since I have to work with stocks on a daily basis anyway. I am not sure that it needs to be part of the gnome core, since I don’t know what percentage of users will use it, but I do encourage you to work and release a final version.

    Personally I use Fedora Core 4 (and FC5T1), and would be more than happy to test if there is an installable RPM. This is something that would be great in fedora-extras.

    — noah

  8. noah Avatar
    noah

    One more thing,

    graphs and quotes could be grabbed from several places. For example, clearstation.com has very good graphs, while some other places have quotes for more funds.

  9. Laurent Richard Avatar

    Salut,

    pas mal du tout, continues.

    Cela marche aussi avec yahoo France et sur les sites des différentes places boursières européennes ?

    Pourquoi ne pas calculer la valeur du portefeuille aussi avec en plus différentes factures de frais sur le portfoliio, (frais bancaire pour la garde des titres, …)

  10. justn Avatar
    justn

    great applet, but it seems the make install didn’t get it to show up in the applets list. Any idea on how I can get it to show up so I can add the applet into the panel?

  11. Christopher Avatar

    Interesting…what made you think of this?

  12. Erlend Avatar
    Erlend

    The file ‘Invest_Applet.server’ has to be in the right directory, (/usr/lib/bonobo/servers/ for Ubuntu Dapper). Mine ended up in /usr/local/lib/bonobo/servers. A quick workaround is simply to move the file and the applet shows up in the applet chooser.

    Anyway, great applet!

  13. Meg Avatar

    I have just started stock trading in Singapore. Wish us success in snatching our wealth in our stock market!
    My blog is at http://stock-wealth.blogspot.com. Hope to C U there!

  14. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    Very cool applet – I use FC5, would love to see this end up in Extras or something, if not in GNOME itself..

  15. 2hansen Avatar

    I have just installed Edgy – and found the Invest Applet. Very nice piece of work. However, I haven’t got the “Total”-line in my applet – and just right of the invest-icon is either nothing or a coloured field as in the screenshot: https://raphael.slinckx.net/images/invest-applet-1.png

  16. Joris Avatar
    Joris

    I am seeing the same colored field (instead of the total) as 2hansen… (Ubuntu 6.10)

  17. Jakers Avatar
    Jakers

    Hmmm. Kinda cool but does not support currency rates as in the following string: USDCAD=X

    This was the behaviour in stock ticker.

    Would be nice to have it back unless I’m missing something.

    salut!

  18. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    Is it possible that Invest will someday have ticker functionality?

    I just want to see a scrolling list of some basics, like the Dow, S&P, NASDAQ, etc. Maybe a few individual stocks. Or maybe not. I don’t care about a specific portfolio, I just want to see prices.

    Maybe that’s already supported. Is there any kind of documentation? I’ve been able to figure out how to change things in the portfolio editor, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. The drop down on the panel doesn’t drop down, all that happens is that the arrow changes size briefly.

    What am I missing?

  19. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    Wish I could use it. Using Edgy. Added to panel from aplets. Won’t open, can’t remove with right click. Help

  20. Toby Corkindale Avatar

    Hi,
    Thanks for the app. A minor feature request:
    Could you add support for a third decimal place? eg. $0.085

    cheers,
    Toby

  21. Nikola Cenic Avatar
    Nikola Cenic

    Hi,
    Is there any way to show graphs from the german financial yahoo web page. Basically I can see the stock price and the daily change, but cannot open the graph as the address is pointing to a wrong place.
    How can I edit this and change the address? Is there anyway to save the setting when viewing graphs? GOTTA SAY GREAT APPLET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  22. Nils Avatar

    Nice applet! Is there a possibility to add support for other stock exchanges than american ones?

  23. David Sachdev Avatar
    David Sachdev

    I have just started using Invest today, and I like the expanded offerings that you have put in. There are some things that I think will take some time to get used to. I am a big investor as well as a developer, and I’m thinking about contributing to the project. I will check out the project website shortly.

    Thanks
    David

  24. Pavel Avatar

    Hi, thanks so much for creating this, works wonderful on ubuntu. I just wondered is there a way how to change the defualt view for the graph? I have to change it all the time, the different indicators.

    Love

    Pavel

  25. sdb Avatar
    sdb

    [quote comment=”8390″]Is it possible that Invest will someday have ticker functionality?

    I just want to see a scrolling list of some basics, like the Dow, S&P, NASDAQ, etc. Maybe a few individual stocks. Or maybe not. I don’t care about a specific portfolio, I just want to see prices.[/quote]

    Exactly!

    I just upgraded and now I’ve lost gtik and have no more scrolling ticker.

    I like the graphs, but really miss my ticker!

    sdb

  26. Joseph Avatar
    Joseph

    Hey, what about proxy support?!?

  27. Anbu Avatar

    Cool work. Nice tool , Can a I get a lookalike program for windows?

  28. Jonathan Avatar
    Jonathan

    I love the applet, but I would like to know what the different colors mean. (red and green are obvious).

  29. Jacques Avatar
    Jacques

    Hey, it seems that if i enter an “amount” in fedora 8, I get a blank popup window from the applet. If I leave the amounts as all zeros, I see the current value and percent change.

    One feature that I think would be nice, would be an option to specify the minimum percent change to show a colour change. Say if a stock hasn’t changed by more than .05%, the entry is shown as black, otherwise it is shown as green or red.

  30. Pat Avatar
    Pat

    Hi,

    This applet is great 🙂

    I’d like to request a feature…

    I use Sharebuilder as my broker, and they allow me to buy fractional shares of stocks. For example, I own .54 shares of Google.
    When entering my stocks into Invest, i discovered that it will only accept whole numbers.

    Not a big deal, but it would be a nice if it allowed fractions of shares…

    Thanks!

  31. leotrader Avatar

    I always find myself searching the web for sights with stock market news and free charts but I can’t find one simple site that gives all the info I want on one page so I can quickly see an over view of the market as well as news and stock charts, so I’m building a new web site for this purpose, I’ve just started working on this site so any advice would be approached.

    One trading site built by traders for traders, Market News, Free Charts, and useful stock Gadgets:

    http://www.allstockcharts.com

  32. Alvaro Avatar
    Alvaro

    Great app! But for some reason I don’t get the Total line 🙁

  33. Stock trading Avatar

    Here is what we call abrilliant idea of investing aplet.

  34. achammer Avatar
    achammer

    Thanks man. I can’t tell you how convenient your invest applet has enabled me to know what’s going on in the financial market. It’s also one of the reasons why I love Gnome.

  35. Adam Avatar
    Adam

    Nice app with one big feature missing: scrolling ticker!

    Also it could be nice to be able to configure update intervals.

  36. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    Love the app!

    Is there a way we can include the prices of precious metals as well?
    Gold, silver, etc.

    As a developer I’d love to help if you could point me in the right direction.

  37. Adam Avatar
    Adam

    @Brian:

    That option is already there (sort of):

    To find your symbol, go to Yahoo Finance, Menu “Investing”, “Market Stats” and then “Commodities/Futures”. You’ll find metals, oil and stuff there.

    Only trouble is that, since it’s futures, you’ll probably need to change the symbol every month or so.

  38. Taciano Avatar
    Taciano

    A great upgrade for it would be an alarm function, where a pop-up tells you when an stock increased more than an estimated value.
    Let me know if you like it!
    =]

  39. Adam Avatar
    Adam

    Bug #1: The ‘average change’ in the tooltip is not the average at all, but in fact just the change of the first listed stock.

    Bug #2: Invest does not update quotes automatically at all.

  40. Francesco Avatar
    Francesco

    I am using it with a desktop with Mint 7 and it works fine. Great applet.

    But with my laptop with either ubuntu 8.10 or 9.04, it does not works. I
    always get only the message: “No stock quotes are currently available”. It seems there is a problem with connecting with the yahoo servers. I also have weather applets that connect to internet with no problem.

    Any idea?

  41. mouve Avatar
    mouve

    Hi.

    I appear to have found a bug in my version (2.24.3.1 according to the program info): When I’m trying to load the 3 year charts (“3y”), the program really displays the stock values for the last 3 months (“3m”). Is this already fixed for future releases?

    Cheers, mouve

  42. […] Stock Trading, yay ! « Raphaël Slinckx – On stock trading. Stock trading is fun.. well, when you make money of course. There are days when you wish you didn’t buy that crappy stock, today it’s intel. They released apparently bad numbers yesterday and took the plunge: … […]

  43. mahavishnu Avatar
    mahavishnu

    I’m using Invest 2.22.2. I love the applet, but I would like to know what the different colors mean.

  44. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    I love the app! Keep up the good work!

    I would second the scrolling ticker.

    Also would it be possible to see info from news articles/msg board?

  45. Paul Avatar
    Paul

    Looks good so far. Is it possible for the app to get quotes for stocks on non-US exchanges, such as the London Stock Exchange? If so, how should the symbol be specified?

    Thanks

  46. panta rhei Avatar
    panta rhei

    Thanks, very cool applet. I use it every day.
    When tracking Swiss stocks (i.e. HOLN.VX) the “mini” chart is scaled starting from 0. I assume Swiss quotes start with a value 0.00. Possible solution: Ignore quotes of value 0.00?

  47. ruben Avatar
    ruben

    How can I backup the portfolio if I want to move to another computer? It is very annoying to manually enter all codes every time I have to change to another computer.

    Suggestion: allow to export/import the portfolio to/from a csv file.

  48. Bruno Durand Avatar
    Bruno Durand

    Hello,

    Some stocks codes are not defined only with capital letters:
    exemple: Al.PA in France for “Air liquide” company.

    Inverst 2.22.3 doesn’t accept stock codes with one small letter.
    I presume that the symbol code is converted in capital letters.

    Rgds,

    Bruno Durand

  49. Jan Avatar
    Jan

    Great tool! I use the Invest 2.30.0 tool on a daily basis.

    A really nice addition would be to have currency and exchange rate included.

    Creating a list with stocks from several international stock exchanges results in a wrong position balance as each local currency is summed together without conversion to a common currency.

  50. André Avatar
    André

    Thanks, I use Invest 2.3 both at work & home computers.

    Yahoo does not seem to have ticker for this company anymore:
    http://www.osloaxess.no/markedsaktivitet/stockOverview?newt__ticker=THIN&newt__menuCtx=1.1.2

    I assume it’s a big deal to make Invest read osloaxess.no tickers, (but I am not a Python programmer.)

    Would you please take a quick look at the URL, and tell me how much work that looks like (if you recognize the URL formatting, it similar or not) ?