Critique My First Start-up? (Not yet public) | Hacker News Reader

Critique My First Start-up? (Not yet public)

algxchange.com

I am just finishing up all the code for the entire site, setting up my analytics, and awaiting my site design (the current one you see there is a temporary place holder).

What I am looking for is some critique, advice, and anything else that you could see that would help my site out.

It is not public yet (not officially) as I am awaiting a web design for it, but I thought I'd see if I could get a few people to look at it, and feel it out, and tell me what you think except about the site design of course ;)

the site is http://www.algxchange.com/

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Here are a few comments -> a) Include some sample tickers - eg spx, usd for which predictions are available for free without any ads, use these as your demos. b) Include some graphs which highlight the tracking error of your predictions. c) I dont know how large your team is, but the two apis - trading and predictions seem to be two complete products. Maybe you should focus on one before you launch the other. d) Some kind of integration with excel would be nice. I know of quite a few traders who are very analytical but not programmers and hence use Excel to build / test their models.

I'd say drop the "predictions" angle, and focus on this:

"We wanted a simple system to keep an balance, as well as take buy/sell trades as realistic as possible."

I'd love a system that would let me test ideas on historical ticker data (last 5 years would be a good start).

In my mind, it works like this: You start with a fixed amount of virtual money, and you set the date to some specific day in the past. Then, you can buy and sell at whatever the market price was at that particular point in time. Once you're happy with your portfolio, you can advance the clock a few minutes, hours, or weeks, and see how you would have done.

Essentially, I want the ability to quickly test trading strategies that would normally occur over a much longer period of time.

Add in some screening tools, etc, and you have something I've been wishing for for many years.

I am just finishing up all the code for the entire site, setting up my analytics, and awaiting my site design (the current one you see there is a temporary place holder).

What I am looking for is some critique, advice, and anything else that you could see that would help my site out.

the site is http://www.algxchange.com/

I would recommend some backtesting results so people can see what they are getting into.

Pet peeve: It's "APIs" not "API's"

Also, mike@algxchange.com or mike.curry@algxchange.com would inspire more confidence in me than mikecurry74@gmail.com.

I think the GoDaddy logo at the bottom should be removed.

Seeing how you plan on dealing with companies and traders, there is nothing on the site giving you credibility. I would recommend to add an "about" section, as it stands right now, I have no reason to trust you (who is the "we" on the API overview section?).

The project looks interesting, I'm just not sure about who your target audience is. I guess its the homebrew trader?

depends who your target market is, but the predictions angle is a bit sketchy.

as far as i can tell, even the paid predictions are just a stock and a forecast, but there's nothing to let the eventual user know whether they are good or bad predictions.

historical performance information about the forecasting system, general principles or something might be helpful, but at the end of the day, as far as i know, they're just randomly pulled out of the hat and i have no reason to believe they've ever been profitable.

a buyer would need a reason to buy, especially since stock advice out there is frequently offered for free.

@gmail.com e-mail address does not look professional to me, especially for a site which deal with money. You should use the free Google App to get e-mail adresses @algxchange.com easily

what's your target market? day traders? offering stock predictions reeks of the snake oil trading systems advertised on cnbc, so I wouldn't combine that with a data/execution API (which is actually a serious product offering). I also agree with the look-and-feel comments, it's a bit amateurish with the gmail address and godaddy logo. there's also very little information on what this actual is outside of the API docs - how about some screenshots of the control panel?

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