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Post by cambrose on Sept 17, 2012 14:49:46 GMT -8
I appreciate everything this community has contributed to my options education and although I still feel I have very little to contribute back, as an iOS developer, I was thinking one thing I could do would be to build our own app.
I have a few ideas of things that I would love to see in an app but I figured with a little input, we could construct an app that would be of great value to everyone here. I see that xignite has public APIs for retrieving delayed option chain quotes so should be able to populate the app with all the relevant data it would need.
I would make the resulting app freely available on the AppStore. I don't have a lot of extra time but I would put in spare cycles when available. Could just build it up over time.
Anyone interested in pursuing this? A little AFB2 crowd-sourced options app goodness?
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Post by Tetrachloride on Sept 17, 2012 15:20:31 GMT -8
Hi Cambrose, Here are the mobile apps by our own host ProBoards. I'm told they are quite good. $ 2.99 to access any forum on the ProBoards/ www.proboards.com/mobile-forum-appNevertheless, any ideas ? Certainly with a specialized forum such as ours (Apple news, apple stock and options), there's big potential.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 17, 2012 15:24:50 GMT -8
I'm thinking more of app like a configurable options calculator/charter/watchlist etc.
I admit I haven't even looked at what kind of apps are out there. That would obviously be the first step. I just figured it would be interesting to distill the knowledge in this group into an app that could be used by everyone.
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Post by Tetrachloride on Sept 17, 2012 16:09:18 GMT -8
I recommend some concept tests: Watch list including option prices, plus some basic charts such as prices of the past 5-10 days.
From there we can think about layout.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 17, 2012 16:20:11 GMT -8
Just downloaded and subscribed to OptionPosition+. A number of options calculators out there but at least this one grabs live data. Great for a watch list. Still looking.
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Post by nkmho on Sept 17, 2012 17:14:26 GMT -8
Last year, I wrote some code that scrapes options chain data from Yahoo's website every 5 minutes for AAPL and a few other tickers. It's still running everyday, and I have several months of data collected if anyone is interested in it. I've been meaning for quite some time to put visualizations of the data, using things like Highcharts/Highstock to plot the premium history. I just started to take one day off each week from my normal job to work on things on the side, like writing more code to analyze price history and trends. For now, I'd just throw it on my website, but at least format it well for iOS devices, so I don't have to deal learning real iOS development.
If you guys have some ideas on what you'd like to see, I might be able to bang it out based on the data I have.
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Post by Tetrachloride on Sept 17, 2012 17:19:55 GMT -8
Anything is better than nothing. Really looking forward to the possibilities. It would give me a great sense to see charts and a few key numbers rather than comparing numbers in different emails or webpages. The app doesn't necessarily have to be iOS based either.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 17, 2012 17:31:36 GMT -8
Last year, I wrote some code that scrapes options chain data from Yahoo's website every 5 minutes for AAPL and a few other tickers. It's still running everyday, and I have several months of data collected if anyone is interested in it. I've been meaning for quite some time to put visualizations of the data, using things like Highcharts/Highstock to plot the premium history. I just started to take one day off each week from my normal job to work on things on the side, like writing more code to analyze price history and trends. For now, I'd just throw it on my website, but at least format it well for iOS devices, so I don't have to deal learning real iOS development. If you guys have some ideas on what you'd like to see, I might be able to bang it out based on the data I have. That's awesome. I was digging more into xignite and it appears that it is a paid service. So many free stock quote web services out there but not anything for options that I can find yet. Was thinking I'd have to digest yahoo as well. Are you able/willing to serve the data. If not, I would certainly be able to.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 17, 2012 17:32:18 GMT -8
The app doesn't necessarily have to be iOS based either. Oh, but it does.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 17, 2012 17:34:01 GMT -8
Playing around with OptionPosition+. Not a lot to it but I certainly like being able to see my entire portfolio value as I play with price, time, and volatility.
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Post by nkmho on Sept 17, 2012 17:48:24 GMT -8
That's awesome. I was digging more into xignite and it appears that it is a paid service. So many free stock quote web services out there but not anything for options that I can find yet. Was thinking I'd have to digest yahoo as well. Are you able/willing to serve the data. If not, I would certainly be able to. Yeah, I can serve up the data. For now, I just dump everything to CSV. I can also hook you up with my scraper code repository if interested.
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Post by Lstream on Sept 17, 2012 17:49:52 GMT -8
Hey Cambrose - you taken an iOS app through the entire approval process yet? We just did it in our company, and the process was seriously frustrating. Our app was huge so maybe that explained what happened. We got rejected for rules that we had no way of knowing even existed. Took us over a month to finally get the app properly tested, and then we were approved in an afternoon. We are done now, but for a while I felt like jumping ship to Android .
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Post by cambrose on Sept 17, 2012 18:04:16 GMT -8
Yeah, I can serve up the data. For now, I just dump everything to CSV. I can also hook you up with my scraper code repository if interested. If you're willing, I would love to get the legacy data and code. I could set up a database to continue to pull the data and serve it efficiently to the app. Would save me the time of writing a parser. With that in place, we could get right into the meat of the matter.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 17, 2012 18:09:54 GMT -8
Hey Cambrose - you taken an iOS app through the entire approval process yet? We just did it in our company, and the process was seriously frustrating. Our app was huge so maybe that explained what happened. We got rejected for rules that we had no way of knowing even existed. Took us over a month to finally get the app properly tested, and then we were approved in an afternoon. We are done now, but for a while I felt like jumping ship to Android . Yes, I have 5 apps on the store. All except 1 went pretty smoothly. 4 of the apps are app versions of a client's publications. The last app got rejected because Apple felt it was a book and should be sold as such. I appealed stating the history with the prior apps and our desire to put more non book content in the apps and they accepted it. Sorry to hear your experience was difficult but glad you made it through
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Post by nkmho on Sept 17, 2012 20:28:44 GMT -8
Yeah, I can serve up the data. For now, I just dump everything to CSV. I can also hook you up with my scraper code repository if interested. If you're willing, I would love to get the legacy data and code. I could set up a database to continue to pull the data and serve it efficiently to the app. Would save me the time of writing a parser. With that in place, we could get right into the meat of the matter. I PM'ed you with a link to my parser and data on my server.
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Post by Zeke on Sept 19, 2012 9:26:20 GMT -8
This new AFB configuration has great potential simply because people can now do great things like what you are proposing. This incarnation of AFB may go places.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 19, 2012 14:57:13 GMT -8
Things are coming along slowly. This is a very busy couple of weeks for me. Perfect time to start a new project nkmho has graciously provided me with his yahoo option chain parsing script and data repository. I'm translating that into code that will run on my platform and then will bring in his legacy data. Going to run the option data at 5 minutes, add 1 minute AAPL quotes (price and volume) and because I'm obsessed with it, 5 minute VXAPL quotes. If I'm missing anything useful or important, let me know. Hope to have that up by the end of the weekend so we'll have a good datastore going forward. Then we can get into the fun stuff.
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Post by lovemyipad on Sept 19, 2012 15:09:39 GMT -8
Things are coming along slowly. This is a very busy couple of weeks for me. Perfect time to start a new project nkmho has graciously provided me with his yahoo option chain parsing script and data repository. I'm translating that into code that will run on my platform and then will bring in his legacy data. Going to run the option data at 5 minutes, add 1 minute AAPL quotes (price and volume) and because I'm obsessed with it, 5 minute VXAPL quotes. If I'm missing anything useful or important, let me know. Hope to have that up by the end of the weekend so we'll have a good datastore going forward. Then we can get into the fun stuff. How amazingly sweet of you to do this!!!
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Post by cambrose on Sept 19, 2012 16:12:53 GMT -8
How amazingly sweet of you to do this!!! Well, I have multiple motivations. A) I have profited greatly from the knowledge I've gained from this group and like I said, I'm not at a level to add much to the discussion, but I CAN do this B) I want to learn a great deal more and what better way than to attempt to digest a lot of crowd sourced knowledge and write the algos to crunch the torrent of data C) This is an app I want D) We need some form of warfare against the HFTs and EOs, don't we?
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Post by cambrose on Sept 19, 2012 16:28:15 GMT -8
I have a number of ideas for this app, but I certainly want to get everyone willing involved. I can imagine a number of functions for digging into the data, calculating the multitude of options spreads, setting up "What if?" scenarios in the app and even more power if we start doing a lot of back end digestion. No reason we can't be running a whole lot of analysis on the back end, have user accounts, set up watch scenarios, and have notifications fired out when conditions are met. I'm willing to throw some firepower at this.
Never too soon to start a wish list. If anyone has ideas, throw 'em out. We can start figuring out a feature set for v1.0.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 22, 2012 13:21:50 GMT -8
OK... parser is done. This is going to be a data monster. Roughly 24,000 data points/hr. 660,000/week. 34.3M/year.
We'll see how it goes, but might have to purge out expired datasets after a set timeframe. Is there any value in retaining them for analysis and if so, anyone want to submit an idea for a reasonable timeframe?
Just have to wrap up the scheduler and should have this running for Monday.
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Post by Tetrachloride on Sept 22, 2012 14:05:15 GMT -8
Can you do private distribution ? Its been a while since I was a developer. Or, charge $ 10 and enjoy some benefit.
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Post by qualitywte on Sept 22, 2012 14:12:14 GMT -8
Thanks for doing this. I do think the collective data/knowledge of this group is very valuable and this will help distill/compile it. Sometimes anecdotal data can be combined together and be very informative.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 22, 2012 14:34:40 GMT -8
Can you do private distribution ? Its been a while since I was a developer. Or, charge $ 10 and enjoy some benefit. The intent is to use this as a data source for an iOS app that we can all use. The features we include in the app is wide open at this point. Some features will be quite obvious, but I'm hoping to push the limits with this. I like the idea of crunching a lot of technicals (SMA/EMA/MACD/etc) on the back-end so users can set up watch conditions and get push notifications. For spreads, could have the program analyze all the option prices and find the best spreads given certain user submitted criteria. As for distribution, not sure of the best way to distribute this. App store is easiest, but I don't necessarily want to support the infrastructure for a potentially large user base. Looking into Enterprise distribution. Then it could just be distributed to members of this board. Distribution and push notification is a little more difficult with Enterprise distribution but can worry about that down the road. To start, I'll probably just look for 20 or so co-developers/beta-testers. Want people who can actively contribute technical knowledge and direction. This is going to be a long and slow development project. Once we figure there's enough utility in it, we'll work out the distribution details.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 24, 2012 17:31:44 GMT -8
So parser is running and minus a few glitches, is now feeding me my boatload of data. Now what?
I thought I had ideas of how I could utilize this information, but as a relative noob, now that it comes down to it, I'm not so sure. Still looking for ideas of how to utilize this information. What kind of analysis would be useful. Until I figure out some direction for the app, I could crunch out a daily report and post here but what would really be of use to everyone?
I've got 1 minute stock/volume quotes (realtime) and 5 minute option chains and VXAPL (delayed 15 minutes). I was hoping for some real-time options alert functionality but the 15 minute delay kinda kills that. I'm thinking capturing 5 minute intervals might be unnecessary... especially considering the amount of data it generates. More possibilities with the stock quote since its at least real time.
I originally thought I could take this information and find the best spreads. I've seen comments in the past of people saying "Why did you pick that spread when you could have had this one with y times better return and less risk". I could number crunch every spread from 5 to 50 dollars for every strike and every expiration but how would you quantify which is better with respect to risk. Obviously the returns are better the more OTM so just calculating for best return is pointless.
Welcoming all ideas. If you bring it, I will write it.
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Post by Tetrachloride on Sept 24, 2012 18:34:47 GMT -8
To start, any chart or statistical summary. Any time frame. Either longer term period or day trading. Whatever the data presents and is easy to compute is a start.
Post a few screenshots, and let's take a look.
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Post by nkmho on Sept 25, 2012 5:50:22 GMT -8
One thing I was thinking of doing is just some OI plots for all expiration dates instead of just the monthly and weekly ones Travis has. You could also show how the OI changes over time (3D plot perhaps?).
I'm also interested in seeing charts on options prices, or even more interesting prices of different strategies like spreads over time. It might also help to show a band on these charts to indicate the bid-ask spread.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 25, 2012 19:14:01 GMT -8
Here's a sample from today capturing the regular trading session. This is just graphed from the data. I would want to figure out what kind of visualizations would be appropriate before getting into coding. The 700C graph shows bid/ask/price but the ranges are so tight it just kind of blends into one. Still need to integrate your legacy data, then can see what we can do with OI data over time.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 25, 2012 20:10:58 GMT -8
I guess a bid/ask band would be better on options spreads as it would be more dramatic with respect to the price.
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Post by cambrose on Sept 25, 2012 20:35:52 GMT -8
OK. Added Apr 2013 680/700 BCS pricing. I have to admit, I'm not sure how you chart the bid/ask spread. If I calculate 680Bid-700Bid and 680Ask-700Ask, it's all over the map... sometimes the Ask is below the Bid. Is there a proper way to represent these or is this not a useful calculation?
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