///DOWNLOAD THE CODE////
with git installed:
  git clone https://github.com/elelias/idlabAssign.git
without git installed:
  there is a 'download ZIP botton' on the bottom right side


//WHAT THE CODE NEEDS////
-python 2.7 
-matplotlib for the plotting.

If you don't have matplotlib installed, it's fairly easy:
On mac:
   easy_install matplotlib
on ubuntu/debian
   sudo apt-get install python-matplotlib  

If there were any problems, I could quickly write the outputs to text files and write a matlab script to produce the plots. Please let me know in case of problems!


///WHAT THE CODE IS///

I tried to code up an automated trading platform, in which one can plug in algorithms and they will perform the trades. The key points are:

-The code is modular and easily extensible.
-Algorithms are represented by classes, so they can be plugged in and out from the platform.
-All algorithms present run simultaneously. There is only one read of the historical data.
-The code can easily accomodate more than one traded symbol.

The general idea was to perform the required assigment, without disregarding extensibility and modularity.



////RUNNING OUT OF THE BOX///

There are to files which run the platform, tradingPlatform.py and compareRSIParameters.py
They can be run with:

python tradingPlatform.py  orderedTable.csv dividends.csv
python compareRSIParameters.py orderedTable.csv dividends.csv

The first one runs two instances of the RSI algorithm, with and without stop-loss orders.

The second one studies the sensitivity of the algorithm to its parameters.