12%

Are all your eggs in one basket? Learn to invest your chicks [dollars] into various markets with 12%, a fun and innovative app that allows you to try investing without the risk of loosing real money.

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Inspiration

One of our teammates is currently in a finance class where she is obtaining financial literacy. More specifically, she learned that individuals that are 30 years old and younger should be saving 12% of their annual income. This, along with BlackRock's challenge of using their Aladdin API to create an application friendly for non-finance individuals, we decided to develop 12%.

What it does

12% allows users to get a better understanding of investing by using a simulation of past investment trends. This allows them to become more comfortable with the idea of investing. To do so, our app displays vital information such as how their stocks could grow or decrease.

How we built it

Using Android Studio and Java, we created a multidimensional, interactive Android application with various Activity screens. After creating the UI, we incorporated the BlackRock Aladdin API in order to utilize some of the Portfolio Analysis API functions.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges included thinking of an app idea that would appeal to our target audience: individuals 30 years old and younger. Another dilemma that we ran into was understanding the BlackRock API with a non-finance background in order to properly utilize it. Lastly, we had a little trouble deciding what sort of application we should make due to our diverse interests and the broad aspect of the BlackRock challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

After many hours of trial and error, one of our teammates figured out how to parse data from a request for the API. This is one of our teammates first hackathon and she was able to learn about Android Studio, a technology that she had never used before.

What we learned

We learned how to effectively divide tasks and manage our time wisely in a technical environment. In addition, we learned a lot of information regarding finances and investing, such as the difference between stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds. We also learned about what portfolio analysis is and who could benefit the most from it. Lastly, we gained more knowledge with Android Studio, especially with figuring out how activities interact with each other.

What's next for 12%

In the future, we would like to incorporate more interactive aspects into our application to keep our target audience interested. In addition, we would like to create another criteria for calculating their stock and risk information using the user's interests (i.e. the user likes technology; shopping, etc.). Lastly, we would like to implement a secure database that will allow us to support multiple users.

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