My name is Joshua Reynolds I'm an undergraduate student at Maynooth University studying a dual-major in Computer Science and Economics. This project combines my knowledge in both aspects of my degree, there is information about the terminology and the maths used within this project on the Maths and Terminology page for full transparency.

My reason for creating this project is to help new and inexperienced investors better their understanding of how to trade and to help them to build an optimal portfolio for their investment goals without the use of a financial advisor.

When i began investing for the first time it was terrifying, I didnt know where to begin. The investing world can be very cruel to new investors and it can be intimidating and difficult for young people trying to manage their finances and investments. My hope is to help bridge the gap between new and experienced investors so that new investors can be confident that they are investing smartly and in line with their goals.

This program allows the user to choose from any combination of the ~2800 securities publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, then uses an API call to pull the last 10 years of historic price data form the chosen stocks. The user chooses the interval they would like to examine the results with, either daily, weekly or monthly depending on whether they want to emphasis on short or long term price fluctuations.

This program calculates logarithmic excess returns on the historic price data then performs Expected return, variance and standard deviation calculations for each of the stocks and later the portfolios. The program also calculates the Covariance matrix and its inverse to allow the program to perform more complex calculations to determine the weights in the optimal portfolios.

The user gets to input the money they have invested in each stock and the program calculates the portfolio on the efficient frontier for the same expected return, compares the portfolio metrics to the users and gives the user the change in weights required to put the users portfolio on the efficient frontier. This is how the program analyses and optimises the users portfolio show them how much return and risk they can expect from their portfolio and how much less risk the can take on for the same expected return from the optimal portfolio. This allows the user to plan their finances and saving goals better as it gives the user a clear idea of the yearly growth rates on their investments and provides ways to lower their risk through better diversification.

The program calculates the minimum variance portfolio and the tangency portfolio from the users selected stocks which shows the user the least risky portfolio that they can invest in and the portfolio with the highest return to risk ratio. These are the optimal portfolios that our users can invest in if they'd like, or simply examine to understand the limitations of optimisation given their choses securities.

If the user chooses to invest in a mix of bonds and the optimal portfolio to diversify their risk the program will show them the expected return and risk of that portfolio based on the percentage chosen to be invested in bonds and in the portfolio. With all of these features this program is applicable for users with all types of investment goals and allows them to find the optimal portfolio for any level of risk or return down to the fraction of each chosen by the user. This means whether you invest to build wealth fast, to curb inflation, to invest as safely as possible or to get exactly 7.168% expected return a year this program will build that portfolio for you.