A prototype of share trading system using agents

Abstract

The Nairobi Stock Exchange is quickly growing in size and complexity presenting new challenges as new investors, both local and foreign join the market. Thus the interaction amongst the market participants require smoothing to ensure a harmonious trading environment. In addition, most of the operations in NSE have not been automated despite that the NSE is one of the oldest stock markets in the region. It is in line with the above that the NSE is currently implementing an automation exercise in the region to create a robust clearing and settlement environment. The technology in line with the overall market automation strategy is manifested in sub-projects. The main challenge is the automation of the many steps involved in stock trading. In addition, another challenge is to realize the benefits of the automated process to conduct transactions. These benefits first accrue to the current providers of the process, who will be able to reduce overheads such as manpower and office space and still be able to charge the same rates to their customers for the services provided. The automated trading system is proposed to be an -v example of a system that can achieve this. It is due to these challenges that a prototype agent based system has been developed to attempt and solve this problem. This system has been developed using Java programming language(java version; java-S.O.3) and MYSQL(version 14.7 Distrib 4.1.13) on a Windows XP operating system.