Our vision is clear: to simplify how quants and developers interact with financial data.
To accomplish that, we have put much effort into standardizing data from dozens of providers and have made it available in one place.
Looking for key takeaways from this webinar? We got you.
The origin of the OpenBB SDK v4 Platform
At OpenBB, we believe in the power of community-driven development.
Our co-founder, James Maslek, shared his journey from a physics Ph.D. student to algorithmic trading and highlighted the challenges in data aggregation he faced and the lack of suitable tools. These challenges - felt by so many people in our community - contributed to the success of the Gamestonk Terminal.
We couldn’t be more grateful for the continually growing community of developers and finance professionals who have contributed to this project since those early days!
After that, James guided us through the evolution of OpenBB from focusing on the OpenBB Terminal to creating a versatile foundation: the OpenBB SDK, now rebranded as the OpenBB Platform.
Unveiling the OpenBB Platform
To give more details about the game-changing OpenBB Platform, Theodore Aptekarev, our Director of Engineering, took the stage and emphasized the platform's key characteristics:
Simplicity and Flexibility: It is divided into Core and Extensions, offering a lightweight Core with standardized data models and modular Extensions for customization.
Technical Details: The Core retains provider-specific data while ensuring consistency, making data integration effortless.
Extensions: The self-contained packages enhance the platform's capabilities, including data provider integrations and custom commands.
A pre-release package is now available on PyPI. It can be installed with pip install openbb==4.0.0a0 so we invite all users to explore its potential today!
Why Quants Prefer OpenBB, according to Jason Strimpel
With 23 years of experience in capital markets, Jason Strimpel (whom we recently interviewed as part of our OpenBB Champions series) was our first guest speaker of the day and explained why quants prefer the OpenBB SDK over other tools. He mainly discussed:
The critical role of data in algorithmic trading workflows.
Python's efficiency in solving business problems, especially in trading.
OpenBB's significance in addressing data-related challenges, including API key management and automation.
Here’s a quote from the event:
"(...) So this is like the unglamorous, unsexy side of this workflow: standardizing data, making sure that all of your data is in the same place, making sure that it's stored, making sure that you can transform it, that it is what you expect, visualizing it, exploring it, etc. And the faster you can get to that point where your data is standardized, the better. OpenBB gives you that."
Jason recently doubled down on OpenBB and his “Getting Started with Python for Quant Finance” course is now the best resource to get started with OpenBB tools.
And we have good news: he’s offering a discount for the cohort starting in the next few days!
You can access it here.
Options Arbitrage Screener Example
One of our engineers, Igor Radovanovic, presented a live demo showcasing how the OpenBB platform transformed his options arbitrage trading workflow.
He highlighted the flexibility and efficiency of the platform, enabling him to - in under 5 minutes - build a custom options chain screener.
Igor emphasized the advantage of OpenBB's standardized data integration across multiple providers, allowing him to merge and analyze datasets effortlessly.
This adaptability, paired with pre-built extensions, demonstrated the true potential of the OpenBB Platform in modern financial workflows.
Integrating OpenBB into Commercial Applications (e.g. Excel)
Tony Roberts, the founder of PyXLL, demonstrated how OpenBB can be seamlessly integrated into commercial applications as part of his Excel Add-In.
He showcased how users can leverage PyXLL to bridge Python and Excel, making OpenBB's capabilities readily available within the familiar Excel environment.
A small demo of what Tony has achieved can be found here, and the open-source GitHub repository can be found here.
The first OpenBB Terminal Pro demo at a virtual event
Since there were still a few minutes left, we could not have missed the chance to offer you a sneak peek into the OpenBB Terminal Pro!
As our CEO puts it in this tweet, this was the first time EVER the Terminal Pro was shown to the public. It has been a lot of hard work from the entire team, but the feedback from design partners and early adopters has been really positive, and that's why we want to start sharing it with you.
This professional application presents users with data from multiple providers aggregated and served by the OpenBB platform. Users can create personalized dashboards using widgets that represent distinct data points, offering endless customization and aggregation capabilities.
While this quick demonstration only scratched the surface of the OpenBB Terminal Pro, we will have more events dedicated to its features soon, so join the OpenBB Hub and subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated.
Watch the Full Webinar
If you missed the event or want to dive deeper into these exciting developments, watch the full recording below:
In case you want to see past events or more content from our team, you can check our events page.
Join our growing community and explore the pre-release version of the OpenBB platform on PyPI.
We will share more use cases and extensions on the OpenBB Hub in the future, so if you don’t have an account there yet, register today at the OpenBB Hub.
Don’t forget to stay tuned for future updates and events by subscribing to our newsletter here.
With OpenBB, financial data is more accessible than ever.