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single-market-robot-simulator

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A stand alone nodejs app and software module for creating numerical experiments with robots trading in a single market.

The induced supply and demand is configurable, as are the types and speeds of trading robots populating the market.

This code can run either in a browser or on NodeJS and would normally be a "middle" portion of a code stack. Visualizations and friendly user-interfaces are the responsibility of other code, or you, the user.

Programmer's Documentation on ESDoc

The ESDoc site for single-market-robot-simulator contains documentation prepared from source code of this module.

Use of Modern JavaScript -- Babel compiler

The source code uses ES6 JavaScript syntax and may need to be compiled with the Facebook-sponsored open source Babel compiler to be compatible with JavaScript implementations in browsers or nodejs. The source code is in ./src and the Babel-compiled version in ./build. The babel tools are linked as package.json devDependencies. This is primarily a concern for other programmers and does not affect stand-alone usage.

Installation

installation not necessary -- use Docker

No installation is necessary if you have Docker (highly recommended for Windows and Mac usage). Skip to the "Usage" section.

as stand alone JavaScript software

To run as a nodejs command-line program, clone this repository and run npm install -D or npm i -D from the cloned directory to install all of the dependencies, including the testing and development dependencies -D:

 git clone https://github.com/DrPaulBrewer/single-market-robot-simulator
 cd ./single-market-robot-simulator
 npm install -D  

as a library in another open source npm JavaScript program

If, instead, you want to use it as a library in another module to be released on npm, simply use npm i -S as usual:

 npm i single-robot-market-simulator -S

as a library in a JavaScript web app

To use this as part of a web site, you will probably want to look at something like browserify, jspm, or webpack to server as a wrapper and help with bundling and integration.

To use this as a library on the browser with jspm, you should set an override option on install forcing dependency fs to @empty.

This was done in the robot-trading-webapp example prototype web app that uses a very early version of this code (1.0.0) from May, 2017. The "robot-trading-webapp" prototype is no longer under active development and does not receive updates or bug fixes. You may still try it but I do not recommend it for producing new research data.

It can also be used with webpack. I do not recall if any special settings are required.

An afforable paid web app is in development that is much nicer, includes visualization and an editor, has time-saving features, and integrates with Google Cloud and Google Drive,

Configuration

Configuration is a matter of preparing a sim.json file BEFORE usage.

Configuration in the stand alone app occurs in a .json file called config.json or sim.json. config.json is currently read by main() by default in stand-alone app mode but this may change to sim.json in v6.0.0 to better agree with other contexts ([2], and the Docker stand-alones) where the file sim.json is used,

When used as a software module, the configuration object config read from the configuration file or other location is passed to the constructor new Simulation(config).

A partial (but still valid) machine and human readable format for config.json is given in configSchema.json as a JSON Schema.

A more human-readable version for most of the allowed fields can be found in the programmer's documentation for the public constructor config params for Simulation.

Configurable supply and demand

The values and costs to be distributed among the trading robots are configured in the properties buyerValues and sellerCosts, each an array that is distributed round-robin style to the buyer robots and seller robots respectively. Each of these values and costs will be distributed exactly once at the beginning of each period of the market.

To be clear, if the numberOfBuyers exceeds the length of buyerValues, then some buyers will not receive a unit value. Those buyers will exist but do nothing. If the length of buyerValues exceeds the numberOfBuyers then some buyers will receive more than one unit value, which is OK and even expected. By "round-robin" I mean that an element j of buyerValues will be assigned to buyer j mod numberOfBuyers . This form of specification is not convenient for every imaginable use, but it is convenient for setting a particular aggregate supply and demand and keeping it constant while tinkering with the number of buyers, sellers or other parameters.

The descending sorted buyerValues can be used to form a step function that is the aggregate demand function for the market.

Similarly the ascending sorted sellerCosts can be used to form a step function that is the aggregate supply function for the market.

Robot Trading agents

The types of buyers and sellers are set in configration properties buyerAgentType and sellerAgentType and the buyers and sellers configured round-robin from these types.
For example, if there is only one type of buyer, then all buyers are that type. If there are two types of buyers configured then the buyers will alternate between these types, with half the buyers will be the first type, and half the buyers will be the second type if the number of buyers is even. If the number of buyers is odd then there will be an extra buyer of the first type. Perhaps a good practice is to have the buyerAgentType and sellerAgentType arrays have an entry for each buyer and seller, but for convenience in simple cases the round robin is used.

The module market-agents is imported to provide the robot trading agents.

The algorithms provided are intentionally fairly simple when compared to Neural Networks and some other approaches to machine learning. Several of the algorithms chosen have been the topics of papers in the economics literature.

Among the choices are:

Usage

Stand Alone App

when run from Docker

It is possible to run the software on Docker without having a Linux system (otherwise recommended), and without installing nodejs and npm (otherwise required). Docker downloads a Linux container containing everything needed and runs it on any computer.

To run on Docker, you must first install Docker Desktop (Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 for Education, Mac) or Docker community edition (Linux).

Create a work directory containing a sim.json file with the simulation configuration. This follows the format given above for config.json only the filename is changed.

The most recent Docker container is for version 5.6.0. To run that, use this docker command:

docker run -it \
       -v /path/to/your/work/directory:/work \
       drpaulbrewer/single-market-robot-simulator:5.6.0

To run the simulator code as it existed for the research project [2] (version 4.3.0), use this Docker command:

docker run -it \
       -v /path/to/your/work/directory:/work \
       drpaulbrewer/single-market-robot-simulator:4.3.0

when installed from GitHub

If installed from github onto a suitable system (preferably Linux, though it may run on Windows 10 or Mac -- and with nodejs and npm previously installed) it can be used as a stand alone nodejs app.

node build/index.js from the installation directory will run the simulation, reading the config.json file and outputting various log files.

You can name a file like /my-files/research/project123/sim.json but the simulator will then fetch that file but continue to run and output market data files into the current directory, and not necessarily in the directory where that sim.json file is located. Instead, consider copying the sim.json file to a new directory, cd to that new directory, and run

node /path/to/single-market-robot-simulator/build/index.js sim.json

where you should replace /path/to/ with the actual directory path where the simulator is installed.

Outputs

A number of .csv comma-separated-value files are produced containing the market data.

Output files include:

buyorders.csv, sellorders.csv, ohlc.csv, trades.csv, profits.csv, and effalloc.csv.

These logs have header rows and are compatible with Excel and other spreadsheets and most analysis software.

There are no output progress messages unless quiet: false is in the sim.json properties. There is a file called period that can be used as a progress indicator. It contains only a single number -- the current period number.

Usage as a software module

Depending on whether you are using ES6 or CJS modules, importing looks like this:

import * as SMRS from 'single-market-robot-simulator'; // ES6

const SMRS = require("single-market-robot-simulator"); // CJS

and returns an object SMRS containing a constructor for the JavaScript class Simulation and a few other miscellaneous items. Ideally, this code will run either in the browser or on the server via nodejs without being modified for the specific environment ("isomorphic javascript").

On the browser, standard browser security policies require different procedures for writing out files. Therefore, the data logs cannot be immediately written out to .csv files (as with the stand alone app) but are maintained in memory for use with other systems, such as browser-based plotting software. It is the responsibility of other software (e.g. single-market-robot-simulator-savezip) to write the logs to browser-side .csv files or elsewhere and/or to provide for visualizations.

Simulations can be run in either synchronous or asynchronous mode. Asynchronous mode is useful for running on the browser so that the event loop and user interface do not freeze while waiting for simulation results.

Example source code for a web-based simulator based on single-market-robot-simulator may be found at

http://github.com/DrPaulBrewer/robot-trading-webapp

and the resulting simulator web app is at

http://drpaulbrewer.github.io/robot-trading-webapp/

However, those are very early prototypes (v1, May 2017), are not actively updated, and should not be relied upon for new research. I have a paid version of this market simulator in development. You should also prefer the docker and stand-alone versions to the early web prototype.

Tests

npm test

from the local git-cloned and npm-installed copy of this repository will run the tests.

You may also be interested in the tests for market-agents, market-example-contingent or other dependencies, which are available from those modules' directories.

You can also click on the build or coverage badges to view public test reports.

Copyright 2016- Paul Brewer, Economic and Financial Technology Consulting LLC

License:

The software is available under the industry standard open souce MIT License.

The MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Notes

[1] Allocative Efficiency of Markets with Zero-Intelligence Traders: Market as a Partial Substitute for Individual Rationality Dhananjay K. Gode and Shyam Sunder, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 101, No. 1 (Feb., 1993), pp. 119-137

[2] This sniper robot was used for an academic research project and its history detailed in Appendix 1 of the resulting publication:

Paul Brewer and Anmol Ratan (2019), "Profitability, Efficiency, and Inequality in Double Auction Markets with Snipers." Accepted at Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, forthcoming.

Before asking the author for help

Foreword

This portion is written for a relatively non-technical audience, including researchers in Economics and/or beginning programmers, who might be interested in getting set up to use the software to run market simulations.

I will appreciate a social "hello" from researchers, students, and others attempting to use the free version of this software.

But I do not have time to answer every question. Nor can I answer every question -- for free -- in a way that will be satisfying or timely to everyone. I have written this section to help with that issue.

Technology can be frustrating, and having a conversation about frustration that also involves lacking useful notes and being ill-prepared, is often mutually frustrating and tends to be a waste of time. If that seems arrogant, imagine I am talking about myself.

I lack useful notes on what happens if the software is run on unsuitable machines.

And I'm ill-prepared to answer questions for free when I spent years producing the free software for free and co-wrote the first peer-reviewed research article for free (that the publisher will hide behind a paywall in lieu of a few thousand dollars, while in tech we thankfully can release free software for free). No external funding sources have sponsored the development of this software. If this simulation software helps with the goals of your organization -- and is saving money by providing a head-start on research or teaching projects -- then your organization should become a financial sponsor. In such a case, please contact me.

I wrote above that I might lack notes or be ill-prepared.

Keep in mind that you might also lack useful notes or be ill-prepared (i.e. it doesn't work but you don't know why and you didn't write anything down about the error messages or exactly what you did; or your question is about how to construct a simulation without reading the documentation or studying other examples).

But on a happier note...

Availability for Engagements

If you would like to buy consulting time for either occasional assistance with a project or full-service creation and execution of a project -- you may find more availability. I am located in the USA and charge USA prices.

The experience from years spent developing this software can not be quickly communicated to someone who has never written a single page JavaScript app. But the technical knowledge can be "self-taught" from available online and print sources (O'Reilley Press) and obtained without a CS or software engineering degree. Before this project, I assisted with technology for the California Institute of Technology, Laboratory for Experimental Economics and Political Science. So, I've been at this a while.

If you are at a university and want me to speak with or advise a student developer team, there should be something easily forseeable in it for the future development of this project (e.g. open source and related and building on what existed before, without conflicting with any other related activities), and funding and support equivalent to a tenured or pro-staff position at US rates. Without funding, I can't solve your new problem for free simply for the science or another co-authored publication for my CV or even for the contribution to free software. At zero price there is tons of demand for this sort of thing, or for almost anything really.

Questions

Before asking me a question, please try these things first:

Thanks for Visiting and Good Luck with your Simulations!