understand market-making
Optibook is the virtual exchange we built in-house for educational purposes. Through Optibook,
we hope to show you why market makers are essential for the functioning of the economy.
Optibook simulates real-life financial markets. We will teach you the basics of financial markets,
and how market makers improve a market by using algorithms. Then, armed with that knowledge,
it will be your task to apply all that theory on real-world practical trading problems.
To do so, you will write your own algorithms to improve these markets.
We hope that you walk away with a thorough understanding of what it means to be a market maker,
and that you are able to solve some of the problems we face every day on your own.
write your own algorithm
You will write your own Python trading algorithms that interact with Optibook. To do so,
we provide you with an Amazon EC2 instance, which you can think of as your own
virtual machine in the Amazon cloud.
Your EC2 instances is pre-configured to work with Optibook and gives you
everything you need to get started. It contains a VSCode IDE with auto-completion.
Log in credentials will be provided to each participant / team.
Should you be enrolled in a university course using Optibook, extra course materials will
also be shared with you on your development environment as the course progresses.
the exchange setup
Optibook is comprised of three components: the exchange itself, a
visualizer
that displays information on the market and on your current positions, and "bots"
that we use to simulate specific market environments. When you've made a trade against
a weird looking username such as "debit-trader" or "coointegration-quoter",
that's one of our bots.
But keep in mind, Optibook acts like a real exchange; it matches any buy and sell order as
long as they share the same price, regardless who they are from. That means you can trade
with anyone, not just our bots - also amongst yourselves.
