Investing made simple.

Intro.

We created a tool to help budding investors with little-to-no financial background learn the fundamentals of investing. We used web scraping to extract important metrics from industry-standard web pages, stored the extracted data into a NoSQL database for a caching-like behaviour, and designed an intuitive and interactive web page to compare stocks within the same industry.

Technologies.

• Front-end: React.js, HTML, CSS, Google fonts, Netlify (deployment)
• Back-end: Node.js, MongoDB
• Web-scraping: Node.js, Puppeteer

Key features.

• Web scraper that scraps financial data from the reputable Wall Street Journal Markets site in real-time
• NoSQL database (MongoDB) which stores data retrieved/updated in the past three hours for a caching-like behaviour which improves app performance
• Algorithm within the web scraper to scrap for different key metrics depending on the industry of the stock
• Interactive and easy-to-use frontend interface that allows users to add and remove stocks of interest
• Algorithm in the frontend to sort displayed stocks by industry for easy comparison by user
• Dynamic frontend interface that supports viewing on computer and phone screen sizes
• Frontend implementation of user login

How to run the code locally.

After git cloning this repository, complete the following steps:

Front-end (locally run)

1. Access the front-end folder in a new terminal window
2. Download all dependencies with "npm install"
3. Run the application with "npm start"
4. A localhost page would appear on your default browser

Alternatively, you can access the front-end hosted on Netlify here: https://stock-win-hackathon.netlify.app/

Back-end

1. Access the back-end folder in a new, separate terminal window
2. Download all dependencies with "npm install"
3. Run the application with "node server.js"
4. If successful, the message "Connected to MongoDB" would appear

Web-scraper to add stocks

1. Access the back-end folder, server.js file on a code editor (i.e. VS Code)
2. Comment out the "//scrapeProduct()" function and include a ticker into the input field
3. Run the application with "node server.js" in a new, separate terminal window

How to use.

• Enter login details. For example: Login (User1); Password (User123)
• Pick a stock from the dropdown menu at end of the page
• Pick a second stock that is within the same industry as the first stock
• Understand the key metrics that are being used by professional investors for the industry and compare between stocks
• Pick additional stocks as desired, or remove stocks as required