Computer Science Department
Market Analysis Tool
Wesley Cleveland
From the opening of the markets to the closing bells, computers make millions of automated trades across the world. While markets attempt to present a uniform price on each stock at all times, in reality small differences occur constantly. These differences can be exploited by very fast automated trading programs attempting to buy from one market and sell to another in a split second in order to ensure a very small profit, which is known as Market Arbitrage Trading. Similar to worldwide stock markets, sports betting exchanges exist throughout the world, and each offers odds on the same sporting events. Through arbitrage betting, it is possible to exploit small differences in exchange odds to ensure a profit. I will build a market arbitrage trading program utilizing a number of betting exchanges. The program will consist of three main parts: the odds scraper, the market analyzer, and the position tracker. The odds scraper will examine XML feeds to grab the current odds from each exchange, placing these inside a database. The market analyzer will then determine if any arbitrage opportunities exist, check with the position tracker to see if these positions have already been taken, and simulate adding these positions and tracking profits.