

Show HN: tool for commodity traders, brokers and analysts. - dem
http://www.bullbear.ca

======
zeratul
Good work. Here are couple suggestions:

\- The long list of articles at the bottom of the page seems excessive; why
not just show 10 most recent? expand when needed; it just clogs the UI

\- Good HTML should read like any other good source code, if the logical,
visual, and functional pieces of HTML are broken into disorganized pieces it
will be hard for a new member of your team to keep up or to maintain it

\- CSS doesn't have any comments [EDIT: this is just for showing your code -
if you want good feedback let me understand what you are trying to do - geez]

\- You should do some simple clustering or at least use some epsilon in you
document similarity matrix to distinguish if an article is new or not; if same
or very similar article shows on three different web-sites will it have triple
effect on the prices? For example:

<http://www.insidefutures.com/articles/article.php?id=345842>

[http://www.mrswing.com/articles/Grain_Market_Analysis_from_J...](http://www.mrswing.com/articles/Grain_Market_Analysis_from_Jim_Wyckoff_58.html)

\- Instead of showing 10 most recent articles it's better to show N-most
recent articles with S-most recent trend; this might be difficult to implement
but seems more helpful for making a decision; otherwise the user has to do
extra work to figure out: "this is an old news, I know that two days ago they
thought otherwise, but now there is new trend"

\- This is not my domain of expertise and I'm not sure how traders work but
this might be useful in healthcare so please keep working on it keeping in
mind that this could work much better in different domains

[EDIT:] Try shared neighbor distance method. Whatever you use now for
similarity feed it into Jarvis & Patrick method and try different NN. This
will take care of outliers and variable densities throughout heterogeneous
clusters.

~~~
wr1472
> CSS doesn't have any comments

Am I missing something? How is this relevant to the functionality of the site?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'm no expert in webdev, but while CSS comments may be useful for maintenance
and for new team members, they are also a waste of bandwidth. I'm honestly
curious, what HN webdevs do with comments in CSS - do you use them, or not, or
maybe have some deployment scripts that strip comments off?

~~~
herge
Ideally, you would use a tool like less or sass to generate your css (which we
don't), so your comments would be in the underlying file but not in the css
given to the user.

------
typicalrunt
The rendering of the font in my machine (Windows 7, Chrome 15) is off. You are
using your own web font "Cantarell", but it looks faded and unsharpened.
Considering that many securities personnel are in offices and a lot of
software is Windows-based, this may be an issue for your audience.

~~~
herge
That's funny. We tried it on Windows 7 and everything looked good, but I'll
look into it.

~~~
tristanperry
What I see on Windows 7 (64-bit), Chrome 15:

<http://tristanperry.com/pics/BullBearScreen.jpg>

So it's not too bad, but some parts (e.g. the 'Trading assistant for commodity
traders' and the footer text) looks aliased.

~~~
herge
Thanks!

~~~
SammoJ
Same for me on FF 3.6.13 Windows7 64

------
themichael
Why would this be valuable to traders? Silver is down more than 1 $ today and
is still shown as bullish. Am I missing something?The biggest factor this week
was option expiry and the fact that there is a massive liquidity squeeze in
europe. No one cares what yahoo finance writes. By the time the info is shown
on your site is has already been processed by hft algos and been priced in.
Sorry for the negative feedback.

~~~
mgl
You may better try <http://www.strongtrends.com> for short-term analysis.

------
singular
I am not a lawyer, but I'd be careful to ensure that the advice this
application gives does not construe financial advice that would require being
registered with a regulator as you could get into serious trouble for that (if
you are not registered that is).

------
nwilkens
A personal preference, but I like to have individual login detail per site.
This looks like I can use many other providers to login, but I would prefer to
utilize a standard username/password.

~~~
athst
I agree with this - please don't make me connect with another login somewhere
else. Give the choice of creating a separate username/password for the site.

------
steveplace
I've learned that it's more important not to trade the news, but trade the
reaction to the news.

If a really nasty number comes out (let's say ISM) but the buy programs step
in, that tells us that the underlying tape is fairly strong.

Another thing I know about these financial publications is that they are often
seeking a reason for market movements. Sometimes it's just pseudo-random price
fluctuations.

Also I'm on the main page now, and I"m looking at the sources that you are
using. Be very careful sourcing prnewswire.com because, well, they are press
releases.

I clicked on a dailymarkets and it was just a syndication of forexpros.com
content, try and look for primary source.

I don't know if you're basing readings off the tone of the writing, but
consider sourcing in more neutral press from bloomberg/reuters.

Hope this helps.

------
jnorthrop
I had a very similar idea about 15 years ago. I was working for a market
research firm that measured the effectiveness of marketing and public
relations campaigns. To quantify results we read, categorized and graded
articles pertinent to the campaign.

Since we were analyzing thousands of articles a week (this is pre-www BTW) I
thought we could leverage that dataset to identify patterns that could be used
to predict the market. Unfortunately it turned out to be a lagging indicator
and 20/20 hindsight isn't valuable.

I'll be interested to see if you can succeed with essentially the same
strategy. Of course the publishing industry is a much different animal now, so
maybe it'll work this time around. I'll be watching you closely.

If you are interested in chatting feel free to email me. My address is in my
profile.

~~~
dem
I agree, predicting purely on lagging information is no good. We had this
comment before and that's why we are currently working on distinguishing
between a news stating a fact that occurred in the past, present or future.
With that, we'll be able to present what the market thinks of the future price
movements. For example, an author saying: "we expect copper to surge in the
coming months", would be recognized as a future statement and factored in the
future bullbear index. Or something like that.

~~~
jnorthrop
That's smart, and very cool. I recall the dollar signs in my eyes when I
thought about the potential in getting a predictive system like this to work
-- I hope you guys nail it.

------
orijing
Thank you for only requiring the minimum set of permissions from my Facebook
account. I hate it when I go to a website that uses Facebook Connect login
button, but requires every single permission possible, when I just need an
authentication system.

------
true_religion
Don't sign me up for a newsletter just because I logged in through Google.

~~~
kanwisher
That was annoying, so try the site out they are going to spam me

------
dem
We launched this tool in July and have got good feedback from traders and
brokers. But I’d like the opinion of this crowd too. So what do you think?

~~~
swah
Folks are going to ask for backtests...

~~~
brador
What's a backtest?

~~~
comm_it
Backtesting is where you evaluate a model, or strategy, or system, by applying
it to historical data.

------
eps
What's the rationale of _not_ providing a conventional login option? I for one
do not have an account with any of listed services - Google, Yahoo, Twitter,
etc - and don't have any plans to.

~~~
simonbrown
It would be nice if you could at least enter your own OpenID URL.

------
raarky
Would be great to learn more about it without having to log in.

More screenshots too plz

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a3camero
You might want to add a way to see what the product is without signing in. If
there is a way it wasn't immediately obvious to me. Looks neat though.

~~~
cfontes
Second that, I never log into anything to get a look at it... If a site asks
that you just lost me, no matter how good you are.

------
hmigneron
Not a huge deal, but I think you should add the "Try it now" button on your
learn more page (<http://www.bullbear.ca/more>). Clicking on the back button
or on the logo to go back to the home page and sign up seems a bit redundant
to me.

Also, once you get to the main page, it would be great if by changing your
settings you only saw the relevant pieces of news (for example, if I uncheck
"Crude Oil" in my settings, I shouldn't have to set a filter on the news as
well to remove the elements from the list).

Love the simple interface, very slick. The features I tried worked exactly
like I expected them to. Well done!

------
cfontes
The idea is nice, layout looks good, will try the features later.

The Font SUCKS on windows xp +chrome( I am at my job )

why people use this kind of ugly fonts so often ? It looks like my monitor is
broken.

------
lucisferre
Interesting idea, and on face value it looks quite useful, however generally
this type of trading is only a little better than casino gambling. Unless the
algorithm has real valuable insight I would be very dubious as to it's
benefits. If it does have really valuable insight then I would expect the
creator to use it to run their own fund and investment and post results.
Perhaps all that is to come though.

------
dem
Thank you all for this feedback. We were amazed by the quality of it.

Note that we have already modified our newsletter subscription process. It is
now opt-in instead of opt-out as it should have been from the start. We
apologize for that. We have unsubscribed everyone that signed-in since we
posted. If anyone wants to hear from us, please subscribe by going to Settings
-> Profile.

Thanks again.

------
orijing
Great tool! I know you probably won't do this, but I think it's important to
be clear. How can you convince potential users that you won't front-run them?
For example, before displaying the sentiments you run your own trades in
anticipation of your customer's trades. Perhaps it'll be right 51% of the
time, but that's enough of an edge with enough volume to make some serious
money.

~~~
singular
That's illegal in most jurisdictions - he would be a fool to try it as he
could end up in jail for that!

~~~
steve8918
There was a recent incident where a dark pool provider was frontrunning their
own customers. I believe it was Pipeline/Milstream. It happens all the time,
and then they get a slap on the wrist.

------
comm_it
I actually work in commodities and I think this is a cracking tool from a
quick glance over. I love the extracts you get when you click on a particular
news story.

The design could be tweaked a little, but the content is great.

Do you place any emphasis or weighting news sources, or is it all a flat
weighting?

~~~
dem
Currently the weighting is flat, but that is about to change. What we want to
offer, and let me know if that is something of interest to you, is the ability
for the user to customize the sources and to customize the weight of each
sources. Each traders probably has its own preferred and trusted sources and
we want to address that.

------
steve8918
#1 question to the creators: Do you trade off this information, and if so,
what techniques do you use?

I personally can't see how I would be able to trade off this information given
the lack of timeliness, so if the creators could talk about how they
personally use it, that would make me more interested.

~~~
dem
We are looking into adding time information. See me reply to jnorthrop.
Essentially, we are working on distinguishing between a news stating a fact
that occurred in the past, present or future. Also, a time horizon has been
requested before.

~~~
steve8918
Thanks. But do you trade off this data that you generate? ie. do you eat your
own dog food?

~~~
dem
Not ourselves, but we know people you do. This whole idea was proposed by a
commodity trader friend of ours and we decided to give it a shot. This is what
came of it. So far, our trader friend likes it.

------
peterdelrosario
Nice tool... great UI. I don't like being automatically signed up for your
newsletter, though.

------
dmix
I'm curious about the backend technology that is extracting the price option
from the news articles.

I believe I met a developer in Montreal working on this. The backend tech is
using python?

Also, is there a subscription or pricing planned?

~~~
herge
Did we meet Saturday after the Montréal-Ouvert?

It is all python with some nlp libraries and home grown and tendered
algorithms.

~~~
dmix
Possibly, I met Rory after Montreal-Overt.

Sounds like a good business, I like seeing startups with solid tech and that
have potential to make real revenue.

------
itsandrew
Great stuff... I'm working on a similar tool at the moment. Page load speeds
were a bit sluggish for me. I'm guessing that's attributable to the large
amount of javascript processing happening?

~~~
herge
Page load speeds and more aggressive caching are big tickets on our todo list.

------
ravikalaga
Simple UI, like it.

So only for traders? No chance of regular investors to use the information in
some way? Just curious about this only being for such a niche crowd.

~~~
herge
Not only for professional traders but for anyone interested in commodities. We
want this tool to become the place to go to get information about the
commodity market.

~~~
elemeno
I'd have some doubts about it's utility to a professional trader - they've
already got a Bloomberg in front of them, which is telling them everything you
can, except faster and from a wider variety of primary sources.

In my experience (which is primarily with options trading, though I've done a
stint working on commodity pricing), traders aren't going to rely on a website
they know next to nothing about as source of quantifiable information about
the markets. Your professional commodities trader is either following their
own news sources and following more specialist sources already, and their job
(assuming they're not just trading flow or taking client orders) is to turn
those sources (along with their own analytics) into sentiment about the NDFs
and Future's their trading.

Still, I think it's an interesting idea and definitely one which I'm going to
poke around in and see what ideas it can inspire.

~~~
dem
What about giving the pros the ability to upload their own documents (and
remain private) for BullBear to analyze and report? Also, what about the
ability to customize which source of information the system process and which
weight each source receive in the bullbear index calculation?

These are all ideas we have on the table for the near future.

~~~
elemeno
If it could do things like that, then maybe selling it as a product that a
company can plug their own sources into and let your algos do the crunching
and analysis and present the data could be a good move.

------
freshfey
I love the simple design and straight-forward copy, well done!

------
adamtmca
Don't Bloomberg and Reuters offer something similar built into their news
feeds? Not that this would negate what you are doing, just wondering.

~~~
herge
As far as we know, they also aggregate news on commodities, but we analyse and
aggregate the news by commodity and by identifying price movement information.
We also provide a large number of sources, bringing in news from many
different providers, let them be new sites, blogs, research papers, etc.

------
aheilbut
This would be much more immediately interesting and useful if you included
charts of price and volume right above the sentiment chart.

~~~
comm_it
Assuming you want real-time data, this is the sort of thing that would cost a
fair amount of money.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. But, from what I can see, this is merely
meant as a useful tool for those who are interested in commodities. The people
who are seriously interested in trading commodities will probably already have
their own favourite price feeds and charting tools.

------
brador
Aside: What's the copyright situation surrounding use of articles like this?
Is it allowed under fair-use?

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ljfoy
Please just use a standard login.

------
wallawe
To anyone: What method or tool is used to feed the news stories?

~~~
dem
We use Superfeedr.

------
raarky
also, since this is HN, what did you use to build it?

~~~
dem
We use Superfeedr for feeding the news into the python back-end running on
AWS. SQS queues are used to send and receive messages between our web portal
and analyzers. The analysis is done in real-time and reported to the web
application running on Google App Engine. Amazon Simple Notification Service
is used to report to the webapp (and will also be used to send to users
subscribed to the API). We use S3 to store the raw documents, but CouchDB for
the metadata and the results of our algorithms.

Regarding our algorithms, we use Reuters' OpenCalais as a first step to the
NLP, but augment it with our own stuff for the bull and bear extraction.

The webapp uses Knockout.js and all other standard stuff like jQuery and
underscore.js. We "build" the javascript using require.js.

~~~
johnx123-up
Site looks faster on "Google Frontend" server. Is it just Python or?

------
naithemilkman
What is it built with?

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borism
so, bullish on silver?

------
localhost3000
Why was this posted to hackernews? Most of us aren't commodity traders so can
offer nothing more than superficial feedback ( likely on the things traders
won't care about - like font choice or css comments...) and we certainly won't
be paying customers.

~~~
Sukotto
I find this sort of article extremely interesting. (I'm in the commodity
trading space, mostly natural gas and electricity)

Beware the fallacy where you believe everyone around you has similar
interests; likes; dislikes; pop-culture background; etc as yourself.

~~~
haliax
Off-topic, but how did you get into commodities? Do you trade independently,
or for a large firm?

~~~
Sukotto
I don't trade. I help traders better understand the market conditions so they
can make better trading decisions. Mostly through pulling together different
types of publicly available (scraping) and purchased data (or, you could call
me a programmer)

After about 5 years of being on the webmaster team of a technology megacorp I
was offered a chance to join great energy trading company in a sort of
developer/analyst/bridge/free-agent role. Since then, that company has traded
hands a couple of times and currently belongs to a large European bank that
wanted into the US power market.

Email's in my profile if you want to chat.

