Event-based Trading for the Average Investor

The Challenge

After off-shoring the initial development, AlgoFast first came to us to improve their existing code base. Their in-house developers were struggling to improve the application while also looking to level up their knowledge of Ruby on Rails and web development best practices.

The Kickoff

We began with a high-level discussion of AlgoFast’s business and goals. Having this perspective gave us the ability to not only build better software, but to build the right software. AlgoFast’s primary goal was to get an MVP (minimal viable product) to market in two months. The application needed to be completely reliable given the critical nature of the product: real-money trades.
As we sat with the AlgoFast team, it became apparent that we needed to empower the in-house developers. Putting these developers in a position to succeed would give AlgoFast the short-term and long-term engineering capacity it needed to thrive. Further, refactoring the code into a more readable and reliable format would help AlgoFast regain control of the application.

Reason Behind our Design

We went back to the whiteboard on what the user experience should be for a trading platform and focused on keeping the interface simple and approachable for the average investor. In lieu of overly complicated charts and industry jargon, key information is clearly emphasized and communication with the user is in plain english. For example, say a user wants to buy shares of the S&P 500 when the Monthly GDP Report comes out and is unexpectedly high. As the user creates this strategy, the application displays the future trade in plain English: “When GDP is Greater Than 17.50T, I will buy 100 shares of S&P 500”. This approach gives investors confidence that they are in complete control of their trading when using AlgoFast.