Home Finance How To Build a Stock Trading App

How To Build a Stock Trading App

How To Build a Stock Trading App
Photo by Anna Nekrashevich: https://www.pexels.com/

Modern stock trading apps: tips for those who have decided to launch their own project for traders

Modern stock exchanges are very technological and attract the attention of people who previously had no experience in investing. As in any IT project, when developing a stock trading app, the choice of specific tools dictates the goal. First, you need to design the whole system and understand what modules will be in it and how they will interact. Creating a powerful stock trading app is, by default, a large-scale project. 

Developing a stock trading app for stock trading — what is important to consider in 2023?

Here’re some tips on how to build a stock trading app. Use them wisely to choose the right vector.

Request for convenience

The competition in the sphere of stock trading apps is very tough at the moment — the main products of different companies have been developing for many years, so they are “enriched” with serious functionality, which is difficult to extend significantly. Developers of other systems quickly implement new functions appearing in one program.

As a result, users pay more attention to the overall convenience and speed of the product, as well as the quality of the interface. Several years ago, the main thing was to implement as many new features as possible for trading on the exchange. Now, there is a demand for convenience and beautiful interfaces. 

At the same time, even from specialized software like stock trading apps, users expect interaction mechanics familiar from working with “general purpose” programs like browsers. Therefore, it is important to implement the ability to add desktops with a different layout of windows and tables in the form of tabs.

Complex becomes simple

Developers should pay due attention to the interface of mobile stock trading apps. You can create a startup that allows you to make transactions on exchanges using taps and swipes in an extremely simple and easy-to-use app. Recently, the demand for simplification has been seen in the desktop trading software segment. 

Many users don’t need much information at the bidding stage, and all their needs are reduced to “buy” and “sell” buttons. Create a convenient simplified window for entering an order to buy or sell, where you can set various parameters for a future transaction.

When trading via the stock trading app, it is possible to protect an already open position with stop orders. They allow, for example, to sell stocks automatically when a certain price is reached. This provides a guaranteed way to fix profits or limit losses in a deal. In practice, it is easier for users to manually enter all the parameters because they change often. 

The more data, the better

Not the most obvious point, but users’ desire for simplicity and convenience does not mean reducing the flow of data displayed in the program. On the contrary, more flexible options for configuring the trading platform encourage users to use as much diverse information on each tab as possible.

Users’ requests to open multiple tables of quotes are among the most popular requests for various services already in operation. Users should be able to create multiple quote windows (as well as windows with data on portfolio status, bids, trades, and open positions). 

Performance is very important.

The performance requirements of the trading app are increasing year by year. You can use the following features to optimize the performance of the application:

  • Delayed rendering of tables and charts — they are updated when new data arrives and after the main thread is released from message queue processing.
  • Filtering loaded data flows — when market activity increases, stock trading apps should “discard” outdated data and show only the most relevant information.
  • Reducing “memory traffic” — you can create “memory management” for often changed and updated objects and collections. As a result, you can reduce the number of unnecessary data builds during work so the terminal does not freeze. It can work indefinitely without rebooting without increasing the amount of memory consumed.

Many users use trading robots and automated trading tools. Stock trading apps, in this case, serve as a tool for them to control the situation on the market. The number of orders and deals of such traders can be in the thousands and even tens of thousands per day, and there is a trend of increasing trading volumes. 

32-bit operating systems have a memory limit for trading apps, so at a certain moment, the application will work very slowly if there are a lot of deals and orders. To solve this problem, it is better to create a 64-bit version immediately.

The most important point: testing and debugging

In general, developing a stock trading app is not writing code for another web startup where any failure can go unnoticed. Any technical mistake is fraught with money loss for future users. That’s why debugging, and testing is the most important stage of creating such software.

The most important thing is to test your program with virtual ones before you start testing with real money. Many brokers today offer a free service of test access when you are given an account that almost does not differ from the real one, but the money on it is virtual. Typically, with such an account, you can trade the major markets — stock, currency, futures — and work with major stocks, futures, etc.

stock trading
Photo by Anna Nekrashevich: https://www.pexels.com/

Conclusion

Trading on the stock market is a rather conservative niche, despite all its technological sophistication. Here are examples of cult products that, despite not having the most modern interface, remain extremely popular because of the unique set of provided data (for example, the Bloomberg terminal).

Over time, however, users tend to want to work with tools that are closer to the programs and services they use all the time — like browsers. Suppose you want to create a successful stock market trading project. In that case, you will have to think about making the program easy, beautiful, and fast while still fitting a maximum amount of useful information into it.

It is also important to determine who your target audience will be. Are they experienced, professionals? Or are you targeting beginners in the stock market? The functionality you will need to implement directly in your project depends on this. 

Featured Photo by Anna Nekrashevich: https://www.pexels.com/