StockPile - Investing for Dummies

Ever wanted to learn about the stock market but scared to lose money? Is it difficult to learn the jargon of terms used to describe everything? Meet StockPile, your tool to a better financial future.

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Inspiration

With the cost of living increasing yearly and inflation at an all-time high, people need financial control more than ever. The problem is the investment field is not beginner friendly, especially with it's confusing vocabulary and an abundance of concepts creating an environment detrimental to learning. We felt the need to make a clear, well-explained learning environment for learning about investing and money management, thus we created StockPile.

What it does

StockPile provides a simulation environment of the stock market to allow users to create virtual portfolio's in real time. With relevant information and explanations built into the UX, the complex world of investments is explained in simple words, one step at a time. Users can set up multiple portfolios to try different strategies, learn vocabulary by seeing exactly where the terms apply, and access articles tailored to their actions from the simulator using AI based recommendation engines.

How we built it

Before starting any code, we planned and prototyped the application using Figma and also fully planned a backend architecture. We started our project using React Native for a mobile app, but due to connection and network issues while collaborating, we moved to a web app that runs on the phone using React.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we faced was creating a minimalist interface without the loss of necessary information, and incorporating both learning and interaction simultaneously. We also realized that we would not be able to finish much of our project in time, so we had to single out what to focus on to make our idea presentable.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of our interface, the depth of which we fleshed out our starter concept, and the ease of access of our program.

What we learned

We learned about

  • Refining complex ideas into presentable products
  • Creating simple and intuitive UI/UX
  • How to use react native
  • Finding stock data from APIs
  • Planning backend architecture for an application

What's next for StockPile

Next up for StockPile would be to actually finish coding the app, preferably in a mobile version over a web version. We would also like to add the more complicated views, such as explanations for candle charts, market volume charts, etc. in our app.

How StockPile approaches it's challenges:

Best Education Hack

Our entire project is based around encouraging, simplifying and personalizing the learning process. We believe that everyone should have access to a learning resource that adapts to them while providing them with a gentle yet complete introduction to investing.

MLH Best Use of Google Cloud

Our project uses some google services at it's core. - GCP App Engine - We can use app engine to host our react frontend and some of our backend. - GCP Cloud Functions - We can use Cloud Functions to quickly create microservices for different servies, such as backend for fetching stock chart data from FinnHub. - GCP Compute Engine - To host a CMS for the learn page content, and to host instance of CockroachDB - GCP Firebase Authentication to authenticate users securely. - GCP Recommendations AI - Used with other statistical operations to analyze a user's portfolio and present them with articles/tutorials best suited for them in the learn section.

MLH Best Use of CockroachDB

CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database - one that can scale. We understand that buying/selling stocks is transactional in nature, and there is no better solution that using a SQL database. Addditionally, we can use CockroachDB as a timeseries database - this allows us to effectively cache stock price data so we can optimze costs of new requests to our stock quote API.

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