Stock-market screensaver

This is a little application I wrote during first 3 days of my PhD at Loughborough. It is a screensaver style financial data screen - the type that appears on TV channels such as Bloomberg and CNBC. Still written on the old .net 1.1 platform, it has an easily extensible 3-tier design. Data is accessed via yahoo.finance.com, hence data might be delayed (stock-prices delayed by 15 minutes) and the accuracy of data cannot be guaranteed. However if you are looking for a fun & cool financial data screen than don't look any further ;-). The application has following features:

• FTSE-100 charts display area
• Major Currencies display area
• Stockprice ticker (15 minutes delayed)
• Currency ticker
• News feed display area (via RSS)
• Settings: ticker speed, scroll direction and visual appearance, RSS feed settings and appearance (settings can be accessed by clicking in top-left corner below the logo)

There is still much to be desired for this application as I only had very limited time to design it. If you have ideas on how to improve and make the data-screen better I will be very happy to hear from you, I hope that if I get a little time I will extend the application myself.

Finally please note that if you use this application you are doing so at your own risk. I have tested the application to a degree but as I had limited time designing it there might still be a number of bugs in code. Hence I would discourage direct use for making real investment decisions. Rather use it to keep you up to date and informed about UK markets / Currencies / News. I for example keep this little financial data-screen running on my 2nd computer on my work desk during the day and every so often I glance over to read news-items. I find it quite useful and I hope you will to :-)

note: The application will change your screen resolution. When it is closed it will return back to the original resolution, however during the process desktop icons might be moved around undesirably. Please do read readme.txt file for more information.

Success

Yesterday two interesting articles have caught my attention in the Business section of September's issue of Esquire.

• The first article presents Darius Bikoff's success story behind his 9 year old vitamin water brand (for which Coca Cola paid him 2bn). His story is interesting and demonstrates that a very simple idea can bring good fruit, even when others keep telling you how your idea is crap and won't work. The path of Bikoff's success wasn’t simple or without turnarounds, he nearly went bankrupt at one point. When asked for advice he would give to others he gave the following answer: First, don't pick something because you feel it's opportunistic. Chasing opportunity means the opportunity is already gone. Pick something that's close to your personal wants and passions, because then, when things get tough, you have the incentive to stick it out. The key point here is to pick something that's close to your personal wants and passions, and I really think nothing could be closer to the truth about growing a successful Hedge Fund. If one does not find passion in how and what you do then most likely you shouldn't put yourself on the line for such a thing in the first place.

• The second article takes an original but interesting look at MBAs. The author decided to spend two years doing an MBA at Harvard worth $ 100'000 to find out whether entrepreneurial talent is something they can teach you at school or something you are born with. The author seems to suggest that to a large degree an MBA can help, well at least it seems to open some doors. For example the hedge fund and private equity industries are dominated by business school graduates. Also at HBS they teach you a range of possible actions to consider on close to 800 cases over a period of 24 months, this clearly will provide experience that will be directly applicable, and since you have learned on past examples you should by this point avoid making mistakes that you might have made otherwise. However as the author also points out, "Great fortunes are after all made by individuals with wildly varying degrees of education". In the end of the day, an MBA does not mean much, yes clearly you might have the initial edge but if you've got what it takes anyway, an MBA might be a waste of money and time after all.