You can just use Google Finance directly from your Google Spreadsheet.
Reference: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093281?hl=en
Show HN: Stock Trading from Google Spreadsheet
21–30 of 90 posts
Re: Show HN: Stock Trading from Google Spreadsheet
#22Trading driven from a spreadsheet brings back horrible memories of my earliest days on Wall Street. Excel was usually hacked in the most grotesque ways: tick data coming in, updating cells and signals and driving actual orders out the other end. Add to the fact that you're running on a desktop computer thats already struggling with a dozen other applications consuming market data, CPU cycles and driving 6 monitors...…
When I was a trader at Merrill Lynch (NYC, 2005) I traded these basket securities on a Swiss exchange through a Rube-Goldberg-like trading system employing two Excel spreadsheets. Here's how it worked:
A spreadsheet on my computer would pull data from Bloomberg using their Excel API and would price the securities. Those prices would be pulled off the spreadsheet by some Reuters application that would then send those numbers through a 56K modem to Reuter's system. Somebody I never met in London would screen scrape the prices from Reuters into Excel. From that Excel spreadsheet the prices would be posted on the Swiss exchange. I was responsible for any resulting trades and they would go into my book.
These were two sided prices (bid-ask) so if the process broke and the market moved I would get picked off. Thankfully they were mostly all delta 1 instruments with 50 bps of spread so that didn't happen too often.
Re: Show HN: Stock Trading from Google Spreadsheet
#23I worked for one of the largest financials services companies in the world and they STILL use excel to drive their trading activities. They are so large and so complex that it's impossible to convert them because no one completely understands how it all works. They were developed by traders/market experts with no help from IT, for years IT didn't even knew they existed. These spreadsheets are truly amazing, I've only…
Also worked for some large financial firms, and can confirm that there is a disconnect between Excel models created by traders and IT. One interesting development was the acquisition of ClearFactr by Goldman [1]. Seems like they hope it will centralize some of these models into one sytem, making them accessible across the firm (Excel sheets can even be imported).
GS has had a centralized risk/pricing system for over 20 years now that is pretty powerful [2]. Fun fact: GS was able to calculate their total exposure to the Lehman collapse 12 hours after it happened using this.
1. https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-buy-financial-... 2. https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/276170/secdb-quartz...
Re: Show HN: Stock Trading from Google Spreadsheet
#24Trading driven from a spreadsheet brings back horrible memories of my earliest days on Wall Street. Excel was usually hacked in the most grotesque ways: tick data coming in, updating cells and signals and driving actual orders out the other end. Add to the fact that you're running on a desktop computer thats already struggling with a dozen other applications consuming market data, CPU cycles and driving 6 monitors...…
And people trusted real money to such a crap solution?
Like the old joke, you just have to outrun the bear. It just had to be better and get to market quicker than the competition. It could probably beat the guys doing it with desktop calculators quite handily. Also, this is the financial services industry: nobody cares how much coke you're snorting if your profits are good.
Re: Show HN: Stock Trading from Google Spreadsheet
#25I don't think many people realize the flexibility of Google Sheets + Scripts. When I need an ad-hoc flexible internal tool, Google sheets is usually the first place I start building.
I'm actually building a product right now that will live entirely on Google Sheets.
Re: Show HN: Stock Trading from Google Spreadsheet
#26Does something like this exist in Europe? Free trading would be a dream. Paying 7,5 EUR to 15 EUR or more for each transaction gets old quick.
Free: Or paying a very little amount compared with what is considered the norm.
Re: Show HN: Stock Trading from Google Spreadsheet
#27Trading driven from a spreadsheet brings back horrible memories of my earliest days on Wall Street. Excel was usually hacked in the most grotesque ways: tick data coming in, updating cells and signals and driving actual orders out the other end. Add to the fact that you're running on a desktop computer thats already struggling with a dozen other applications consuming market data, CPU cycles and driving 6 monitors...…
Edit: before I read the article I wasn't sure if you meant: https://www.alpaca.ai or https://alpaca.markets
Alpaca.markets is great!
What are other alternative for personal solution?
Re: Show HN: Stock Trading from Google Spreadsheet
#28I wish Alpaca worked for Canadians.
There is Questtrade, but comparing the documentation, it isn't as nice to work with.
Re: Show HN: Stock Trading from Google Spreadsheet
#29Trading driven from a spreadsheet brings back horrible memories of my earliest days on Wall Street. Excel was usually hacked in the most grotesque ways: tick data coming in, updating cells and signals and driving actual orders out the other end. Add to the fact that you're running on a desktop computer thats already struggling with a dozen other applications consuming market data, CPU cycles and driving 6 monitors...…
And people trusted real money to such a crap solution?
You'd be surprised at how much this is still the case.
Re: Show HN: Stock Trading from Google Spreadsheet
#30I worked for one of the largest financials services companies in the world and they STILL use excel to drive their trading activities. They are so large and so complex that it's impossible to convert them because no one completely understands how it all works. They were developed by traders/market experts with no help from IT, for years IT didn't even knew they existed. These spreadsheets are truly amazing, I've only…
Also worked for some large financial firms, and can confirm that there is a disconnect between Excel models created by traders and IT. One interesting development was the acquisition of ClearFactr by Goldman [1]. Seems like they hope it will centralize some of these models into one sytem, making them accessible across the firm (Excel sheets can even be imported). GS has had a centralized risk/pricing system for over…
The SecDB article [2], is very interesting!