Retrieving live Data from London Stock Exchange
Stock research and analysis is much different than it was decades ago. Rack then, investors and analysts had access to very limited amount of stock data mainly in print formats. Hoverer, these days, there is a seemingly unlimited amount of data available in digital format publicly.
There are countless software tools offering a wide variety of trade, research, and analysis functions using various sources as their inputs.
London Stock Exchange (LSE), the largest stock exchange in Europe, publishes various indices online through their website.
These indices contain numerical data that are the basis of almost all software tools developed for stock research and analysis.
In this coursework assignment, you are required to develop a software tool using the Python programming language (V 3+) to extract publicly available data form LSE website.
The followings are the list of tasks for this coursework assignment:
Task I: Retrieving and Displaying Data
Write a program to:
1. Read data from "SUMMARY" table on FTSE 100 index web page (sea Fig 1) then save them into your Python code (as a list or any other appropriate ways of choice).
2. Display the saved data on the Python console. The output of your program should look Like Fig 2.
Task II: Retrieving Data from LSE Indices Web page by User interaction
1. Extend your program to prompt user to enter the name of an index from the list of Indices available from LSE Indices web page (e.g. FTSE4Good Global), then display the names and values for the index entered by the user on the Python console in the same format as Fig 2.
2. If the user enters a name of an index which is not listed on LSE Indices, an error message should be shown and the user should be asked to enter the name of a valid index.
Task II: Documentation
You are required to produce program documentation with no more than 1000 words (excluding references and appendices) for your program and should include the following sections and information:
1. Introduction
An introduction explaining the problem definition and an overview of the solution detailed in the following sections.
2. Program Execution, Input and Output
In this section, explain in details the algorithm and implementation including:
- what types of inputs will be supplied to the program?
- the outputs of the program
- the functionality of the program.
3. Program Structure
This is the "technical manual" of the program. An overall structure of the program should be given. Then, each part of the program (modules, functions, etc.) should be explained in sufficient detail such that the reader can understand. The data structures (data types, variables, etc.) should also be explained.
4. Difficulties Encountered
Explain clearly the difficulties encountered during program development. The difficulties due to the programming language, due to the nature of the problem, etc. Also, the effects of these difficulties (forcing to use different ways, abandoning some planned features of the program, etc.) should be explained.
5. Improvements and Alternative Methods
In this section, evaluate the parts of the program and propose one improvement and one alternative methods in terms of implementation (e.g., functions, Python modules, etc.).
6. Appendices
A thoroughly commented program source code must be included as an appendix.