University of Bridgeport

 
CS-597: Advanced Problem in Computer Science
 
-- Master Project Report --
 
September 28, 2001
 

ONLINE STOCK TRADING SYSTEM

Project Advisor: Prof. Tarek Sobh
 
Student: Yuming Bao, #469449
 

 
TABLE OF CONTENTS
 
 

ABSTRACT
 
 
This project is to develop an Online Personal Stock Investing System,

which provide services for investors to monitor and compare price

changes, buy stocks, sell stocks and manage their portfolios, trading

details, view open orders. Through the system, the investors are able to

obtain the real time stock information, finding stock chart, news and

research on internet that can help users to find the right investment

strategies, all these using a user-friendly well-organized graphical user

interface.
 This online stock trading system is modeled as “client-server-data”

three-tier structure. User submits request to servlets, servlets fetch

information by accessing database files or Internet websites and create a

page to display all the information that meets user’s request.

Keywords:

Online trading system, Java, Jave Servlet, Client/Server, browser, web

server

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

 

Background of online trading

Today, you can hardly pick up a newspaper, turn on a television,

overhear a conversation, or talk to a friend without mention of the Internet.

It has done nothing short of change the way our world works and the way

our nation invests. And overall, it has changed us for the better.

Point, click, and trade ¾ these three little words sum up the allure of

online stockbrokers. Using nothing more than an Internet connection and

an account with an online broker, one can buy and sell shares of stocks

and mutual funds with mere keystrokes. No waiting to place an order with

a brokerage house, no high commissions gobbling up big pieces of your

nest egg.
 The number of people using the Web to invest is growing fast. As the

stock market moves in and out of record territory, investors are

increasingly turning to the Web to research, discuss and trade stocks and

securities.

By one account, more than seven million Americans trade on-line --

comprising 25 percent of all trades made by individual investors. In 1994,

not one person traded over the Internet. In the next few years, the number

of on-line brokerage accounts will roughly equal the metropolitan

populations of Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Miami,

Atlanta and Chicago, combined. A Forrester Research study predicts that

the number of online accounts will grow from the current level of about 3

million to roughly 14 million by 2002. Over 6 million plucky investors

have already exchanged the security of traditional brick-and-mortar

brokerage houses for the promise of cheap, fast online transactions and

reams of late-breaking information about the hottest properties on the

market.

Personal computer technology is becoming an important, integrated

element for online investment. Mainframes, mini and microcomputers

have given way to PC's in 1990. Revolutionary strides in interconnectivity

have been observed with the advent of network operating systems (NOS),

object-oriented programming methodology and client-server paradigms

with ever decreasing price to performance ratio. The growth of the Internet

has been richly supplemented with hypertext/media based browser

technology to what we now recognize as the World Wide Web. Some

applications for computer technology allow people access information

resources from global network environment.

Brief Project Description

The goal of this project is to contribute to the design and

implementation of an online personal stock trading system that would be

deliverable over the WWW replete with interactive modules. These

modules will have the basic services: managing personal portfolios,

obtaining real time stock information, finding stock chart, news and

research on internet that can help you find the right investment strategies,

all these using a user-friendly well-organized graphical user interface.

Introduce Java Servlet

This project is implemented most with Java Servlets.

The Java Servlet API, introduced as the first standard extension to

Java, provides a generic mechanism to extend the functionality of any kind

of server. A servlet is a Java program embedded within a Web server.

Instead of using Perl, some other scripting language, or a server

proprietary API to respond to an HTML request, you would use a Java

servlet. The servlet runs directly in the Web server and does not need to

fork off a new process. They can live on between sessions, can

communicate directly with other servlets, and are portable between

platforms and Web servers. Servlets are most commonly used, however, to

extend Web servers, performing tasks traditionally handled by CGI

programs.
 The beauty of servlets is that they execute within the Web server's

process space and they persist between invocations. This gives servlets

tremendous performance benefits over CGI programs. Yet because they're

written in Java, servlets are far less likely to crash a Web server than a C-

based NSAPI or ISAPI extension. Servlets have full access to the various

Java APIs and to third-party component classes, making them ideal for use

in communicating with applets, databases, and RMI servers. Plus, servlets

are portable between operating systems and between servers -- with

servlets you can "write once, serve everywhere."

Glossary

ASCII American Standard Code for Information

Interchange. Most commonly associated with the

standard test format (ASCII test)

Browse An application capable of interpreting hypertext.

r
Client- A system of two or more computers in which at

Server least one computer provides services for one or more

System other computers. The services can be database

services, communication services, printer services, or

some other function.

Databas A self-describing collection of integrated records.

e
Servlet A servlet is a Java program embedded within a

Web server that respond to an HTML request, you

would use a Java servlet. The servlet runs directly in

 the Web server and does not need to fork off a new

process. A servlet can live on between sessions, can

communicate directly with other servlets, and are

portable between platforms and Web servers.

GUI Graphical User Interface, an interface having

window, pop-down menus and other features that are

often manipulated with a mouse pointer.

Internet A group of interconnected computers.
JAVA Object Oriented programming language.
LAN Local area network. A group of microcomputers

connected to one another by means of communication

lines in close proximity, usually less than a mile.

URL Uniform Resource Locator
Yahoo Internet search engines.
Tomcat A web server designed for PC.
 

SYSTEM FUNCTION OVERVIEW

 
This project is an online stock trading system. It is a three-tier

structure Java program. User submits request to Java servlets, and servlets

will fetch information from Internet or from database files and create a

page to display all the required information on user’s web browser.

Through this system, user can monitor and compare price changes, trade

stocks, manage portfolio, get real time information about stock and

market.

Through the system, users can perform following functions:

Compare Price Changes

Twenty selected stocks' real time price is continuously monitored by

the back engine. User may check a number of them that are the most

up/down during a period of time in the past. By just click a button, the

given number of stocks' symbols and price changes will be listed in the

ascending order.

The twenty stocks that are chosen to be checked are: DELL, IBM,

ORCL, MSFT, CSCO, INTC, SUNW, LU, EMC, GE, NT, AOL, PALM,

JDSU, AMZN, YHOO, AMD, CIEN, F, AXP.

Access Stock Prospectus

Allow investors to retrieve the related information about some specific

stock. The following information about each stock can be obtained

through the system: (1) Real time Stock Information (2) Stock price charts

(3) Company Information of corresponding stocks. (4) Stock research and

(5) Related news. User will get all the useful information by giving the

stock system.

Access User Portfolio

Allow investors to access their own portfolios. Each investor has

his/her own portfolio, which will keep all the information about the

investment of the user, including account statement (including available

cash, available margin, account value, stock value, buying power, pending

money and holding stocks), transaction history and open orders. The
investors can access their personal account and get all the information

about their account.

Trading Stock.

User can exchange stocks via the system. The system is designed to

protect investors from fraud. Each user will be asked to input their account

name and his/her password. If the login/password is verified, the use can

enter the portfolio, otherwise, the login request will be denied. Users can

customize their orders by choosing Action (Buy or Sell), Quantity(Shares

of stocks), Symbol(Stock symbol), price(the acceptable trading price) and

Order Type(Market or Limit). Background running engine will check all

the open orders periodically. For “market” orders, the final deal price will

be the last trade price of the real market, and the transaction will be

complete as soon as possible. For “Limit” orders, if your buying price is

lower than the market price (or your selling price is higher than the

market), your order can’t be completed until the market price meets your

price. Otherwise, your order will be complete as soon as possible, and the

deal price will be the market price.

The trading engine

The engine is an always alive process running background. It will

check all the open orders in the system and try to accomplish the orders. It

will periodically check open orders in the system. Check the real time

market price of the stock. If the price is better than the user request, the
order will be fulfilled with this market price, else the order will remain

open in the system.

Meanwhile, the engine is also continuously monitoring the price

changes of twenty selected stocks. According to user’s commands, it may

compare the price changes, and then obtain a number of stocks that are the

most up/down during a period of time in the past. After that, the given

number of stocks' symbols and price changes will be listed in the

ascending order.

 
 SYSTEM DESIGN OVERVIEW
 
System Organization

The system organization for the project is as follows:

In general the clients (web browser such as Netscape) will send

requests via the web server over to the Java servlets reside on the server

PC. Those servlets will access the database files or access information on

the Internet, and then generate a response page to display on user's

browser.

System Flow

User inputs all required information into the web browser and then

submits the request. The request will be sent to the Java Servlets reside on

the server PC. Once a request is received by the servlet, the servlet will

perform corresponding function depend on the request type. The servlet

maybe access the database files or retrieve the information from the

Internet. In the end, the servlet will generate a dynamic homepage sending

back to client web browser. User will get all needed information on the

web browser.

Implementation Languages

In late 1995, the Java programming language burst onto the Internet

scene and gained instant celebrity status. JAVA is a portable programming

language with a standard set of class libraries. The promise of java is that

it will become the universal glue that connects users with information,
whether that information comes from web servers, databases, information

providers, and any other imaginable sources. The APIs permit a

programmer to create appropriate Graphical User Interfaces and

communicate with network services such as HTTP. Java has built-in

security and safety features are reassuring both to programmers and to the

users of the program. Java even has built-in support that make advanced

programming tasks, such as network programming, database connectivity,

and multithreading, more straightforward.

System Requirement

Server End

1.      You must have Java Virtual Machine on your PC.

2.      You must have Java Servlet Development Kit (JSDK) installed on

your machine.

3.      A web server must be installed. You need to download Java Web

Server such as “Tomcat” from java.sun.com. Install them into

c:\program files\Tomcat-3.2.1.

Client End (User end):

IE4.0/Netscape 4.5 or up is recommended.

User Inputs

User interactivity will be a major function that will be required by the

on line stock trading system. Sometimes users will have to enter

information in form fields by using their keyboard or sometimes users will

need to use the mouse to click buttons, highlight choices, initiate

functions, and navigate the pages.

System Outputs

The outputs of the application will be generated dynamically by the

application according to the user's input and interactivity. The application

will communicate with the server end database files and will return

relevant information.

System Files

Besides the browser application, end-users do not have to have

additional system files to run the interface because the JAVA Virtual

Machine and the web browser handles most of the processing of servlets

and HTML tags.

Limitations and Restrictions

Users can encounter problems or limited functionality if they are not

using Netscape version 4.5 or later. The JAVA Virtual Machine is

available in an earlier version of Netscape but, tends to be unstable at

times which causes the computer, especially Power PC, to hang. It is

recommended that users should upgrade to a newer version of Netscape

that are available at the Netscape websites.

Classes

Class name Functions Achieved

Activate Generate the reply page of opening orders
actv Generate the page body of opening orders
delete Delete an opening order
 dotrade Do the trade
dow Generate the market index of the main
page
engine Check opening orders and 20 real time
stock price
CheckStock Get stock price from stored file for
compare
checkActiveStoc Check stock price change by user’s
k instruction
GetQuote Get real time quote data from internet
GetValue Get real time stock market price
History Generate the history page
mainFrame Generate the main page
newUser Create a new account for a new user
OpenFile Open file
portfolio Generate page of portfolio
port Get token from data file and prepare for
portfolio
quote Get the real time stock information
trade Trade stocks
loginStock Login the stock center
 
 USER MANUAL
 
Welcome to this User Manual. This manual will lead you go through

the installation and tell you how to use the “On line stock trading system”.

Installation

This program is modeled as “Client-Server-Database” three-tier model.

Install server

You must have Java Virtual Machine on your PC.

You must have Java Servlet Development Kit (JSDK) installed on

your machine.

A web server must be installed. You need to download “Tomcat” from

java.sun.com. Install it into c:\program files\Tomcat-3.2.1. Set up an alias

(virtual directory) “trade”, and then map it to the directory “c:\jy\trade\”.

Copy all java files into C:\jy\trade\Web-inf\classes\. Under this

directory, compile all the java files using “javac *.java”.

Copy all html files into C:\jy\trade\, and copy all image files into

C:\jy\trade\images\.

Make a directory c:\jy\trade\profiles, make an empty file named:

password.txt.

Now your installation for server end has finished.

Start Server

To launch the server, click C:\Program Files\tomcat-

3.2.1\bin\startup.bat; and then start the engine by command line: java

engine x (x: an integer that represents the interval in seconds at which

engine checks real time stock price once again).

Client

All needed is a web browser. IE 4.0 / Netscape 4.5 or up is

recommended. Once the server is launched, user can access the service

anywhere if and only if a web browser is available. In this manual,

127.0.0.1 (localhost) is used as server’s IP address. Enter

“http://localhost/trade/loginStock.html” in the address bar of the browser.

To access a sever on another machine, just replace “localhost” by the

server’s IP address.

User Instruction

Login manual

Open the location “http://localhost/trade/loginStock.html”, the users

will see login page.

For users with an existing account, just enter his user name and

password, then click “submit” button.

If user name and password are correct, “stock center” page will be

displayed. That means login succeeds.

 If user left user name or password empty, there will be an alert

window pop up and tell user to fill in the user name or password.

If user name or password is not correct, system will tell user “Failed to

login”, user can click “login” and try to login again.

The user ID will be a combination of at most 20 any characters. The

password will be a combination of at most 30 any characters. All user

names and passwords are case sensitive.

New User Register

If you are new to this system, you need to create a new account. Click

“register” button, “User register” page will be displayed.

All four fields are required. Name and password will be used to login

later. Please be sure to remember your name and password. Re-enter

Password is to let the user verify their password. This field must be

EXACT same as Password. The Starting money is the amount of money

you want to deposit to your account.

 If new user’s name has already been used, system will tell user “User

name has been used. Choose another one”, and user can click “Register

Here” and try to register again.

If any field of register form is left blank or re-enter password is

different from the first time, there will be an alert window pop up and tell

user to fill up all the field or verify his password again.

After correctly registered, “stock center” page will be displayed. Users

can do all kind of transaction through this page. The detail will be given in

the following sections.

Portfolio

Click “Portfolio” on pushdown menu, and then click “Refresh”. Users

can view information about their account, including

Available Cash: The amount of cash you have in your account

Available Margin: The amount of money you can borrow from your

broker

Account Value: The total value of your account, including cash value

and stock value

 Stock Value: The total value of your holding stock

Buying Power: How much money you can spend to buy stock. This

value is the sum of Available Cash and Available Margin

Pending Cash: the amount of money is pending. This number is the

amount of money pending due to the opening “buy” orders.

Users can also view stocks they have, including Stock Symbol,

Quantity, Current Price and Price changing.

Trade

Click “trade” on pushdown menu, Trading page will be displayed.

Buying Stock

Select radio button “Buy”, enter quantity for purchase, stock symbol

and stock price that willing for transaction, then choose order type,

“Limit” or “Market”. If choosing “Market”, price field can be left empty.

In fact, anything enter in price field will be neglected when order type is

“market”. For “Limit” orders, a valid price must be provided, or the order

will be invalid and can’t be submitted.

 After transaction succeeds, system will check the order, including

validating all the required. If any field is in valid, system will announce

this order is invalid.

Be sure to spend money you do have. Never spend money you don’t

have. System will not accept your order. If user doesn’t have enough

buying power to complete the purchase, system will tell user “You don't

have enough cash.”

If everything is correct, system will insert this order into the trading

system. You will see a page telling you “Your order has been successfully

initiated.”

Selling Stock

Selling stock is same as buying stock. Select radio button “Sell”, enter

quantity for sale, stock symbol and stock price that willing for transaction,

then choose order type, “Limit” or “Market”. If choosing “Market”, price

field can be left empty. In fact, anything enter in price field will be

neglected when order type is “Market”.

 After transaction succeeds, system tells user “Your order has been

successfully initiated.” If any field is left blank or user types in wrong

stock symbol or user tries to sell stocks he doesn’t hold or user tries to sell

more stock than he have, system will tell user “Your order is invalid”.

More about trading

There is an engine running background. This engine will check all the

open orders periodically. For “market” orders, the final deal price will be

the last trade price of the real market, and the transaction will be complete

as soon as possible. For “Limit” orders, if your buying price is lower than

the market price (or your selling price is higher than the market), your

order can’t be completed until the market price meets your price.

Otherwise, your order will be complete as soon as possible, and the deal

price will be the market price.

Open Orders

You can view your open orders by click “Open orders ” on pushdown

menu. You can view all information about your open orders including

action (buy/sell), stock symbol, quantity and price (market/limit).

If you feel regret about some open orders, just cancel these orders by

click “cancel” button at anytime.

History

Click “history” on pushdown menu, then users can view information

about all their account transaction history since the account was created,

including Action (deposit/withdraw/buy/sell), stock symbol, quantity,

price and date/time when completion of this transaction.

Compare Stocks

User may compare a number of stocks among 20, which are the most

up/down during a period of time in the past.

After the button is clicked, the given number of stock symbols and

price changes will be listed in ascending order.

Stock information

Click “Quotes” on pushdown menu, and with different option on

Quote menu, users can view different kind of information about stocks.
Real Market index

Click “Refresh”, user can view the real time market index, including

Dow Jones, Nasdaq, S&P 500. These index will reflect the overall market

performance.

Stock Quote

Click “Quote” on Quote menu, enter stock symbol in text area, and

then click “GET”. User can get real time stock information, including last

trade value, trading time, price change, Stock exchange volume and stock

price change percentage.

User can enter multiple stock symbols at the same time, use space as

delimiters between the symbols.

If user type in symbol that doesn’t exist, system will tell user “Error:

Symbol not found.”

Stock Profile

Click “Profile” on Quote menu, enter stock symbol in text area, and

then click “GET”. User can get company profile from Internet, including

company address, industry type, CEO, company description, fundamental

data (total net income, EPS, Dividends and ect.) and ratio data

(price/earning ratio and ect.).

User can enter multiple stock symbols at the same time, type space in

between these symbols.

Stock Chart

Click “Chart” on Quote menu, enter stock symbol in text area, and

then click “GET”. User can get stock chart of whole last year from

Internet. User can enter multiple stock symbols at the same time, type

space in between these symbols.

Stock Research

Click “Research” on Quote menu, enter stock symbol in text area, and

then click “GET”. User can get stock research information from Internet,

including Analyst Recommendations and EPS Estimates. User can enter

multiple stock symbols at the same time, type space in between these

symbols.
 If user type in symbol that doesn’t exist, system will tell user “Symbol

not found. Look up symbol”.

News

Click “News” on Quote menu, enter stock symbol in text area, and

then click “GET”. User can get news related to specific stock from

Internet. User can enter multiple stock symbols at the same time, type

space in between these symbols. Click stock symbol to read news about

this stock. If user type in symbol that doesn’t exist, system will tell user

“Error: Symbol not found.”

User can also review message related to this stock that post on Internet

by clicking message.

User logout

When user finishes all the transaction, just click “Logout”, user will

logout this online stock exchange system.

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