XYFinance

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  Our app logo

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  The welcome page

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  Bot prompts for user input

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  User enters a valid stock name

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  Bot returns performance of the stock

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  Visual output generated

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  If an invalid stock name is entered, the bot requests for a valid name

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  The bot notifies if the stock is valid but no performance data is available

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  Ticker entries are accepted as well

Inspiration

We are interested in exploring the Blackrock API and the information that it provides such as stock performance data, which can be made accessible to retail investors in a convenient and visually appealing manner.

What we did

As Telegram is currently a very popular mobile app in Singapore, it would be useful and convenient for investors to send requests for stock performance data via our XYFinance Telegram bot on their mobile phones. The bot would return the year to date performance of the stock, as well as a histogram of the three month, six month, and nine month stock performances respectively. This would be beneficial to short term and long term investors for tracking potential stocks of interest.

How we did it

We first used Telepot to design our custom telegram bot. Then we used Python language to write a script that allows users to send and receive messages from the bot. These messages are used to call the Blackrock Aladdin API, which returns JSON objects that contain the required data. The bot will then return an output consisting of the year to date performance as well as a histogram of performances over different time periods.

Challenges we ran into

Lack of understanding of the specific indicators returned by the Blackrock Aladdin API, which limited our ability to expand on possible use cases. Hence we decided to limit our scope to the four types of indicators previously mentioned.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is our first time creating a Telegram bot and working with Aladdin API, and we are proud that we managed to come up with a working MVP within 24 hours.

What we learned

Bugs come in all shapes and sizes.

What's next for XYFinance

As Blackrock is currently offering B2B services, we hope that our product will help to make it more accessible and useable by consumers on the ground as well (i.e. B2C). The app can be enhanced by including other features such as portfolio analysis, and it can be deployed on other major mobile platforms such as WeChat.

Built With

• blackrock-api
• python
• telegram-api