Fintech encompasses a large industry that helps consumers and businesses connect with financial services more effectively. From mobile banking, insurance, cryptocurrency and investment apps – it seems like there are tons of ways that fintech is shaping our lives.

Ever wondered about the role that no-code tools play in the world of fintech? We spoke with a young maker out of India that built a platform to simulate derivatives trading using Bubble.

Here’s his story!

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Hey, I'm Ansh, an undergrad student studying business at college. Currently, I’m a no-code builder and have built multiple projects like a marketplace, a trading platform, and a game!

I learned to code in school and enjoyed solving cool computer science problems. But when it came to building a product, I hated the steep learning curve and slow development speed.

I had all these preconceived notions that no-code wasn’t scalable and can do only pretty basic stuff until I found Bubble!

Bubble seems like magic. Since then, I've built a few products and found some genuinely great no-coders.

From derivative trading to building Lite

I'm a part-time derivatives trader based out of India. Derivatives are highly risky trading instruments where you can blow up your entire capital within minutes. Trying out new trading setups and building conviction to trade in volatile markets is difficult.

So I wanted something to trade options in as real conditions as possible, but without losing real money. But I couldn't find any virtual trading terminal for options. That’s when I decided to build my own.

Lite is a virtual options trading platform that helps people trade options with paper money. Lite is built by taking inspiration from Kite (an Indian technology broker) with a few extra features.

The design is deliberately kept similar to simulate the look and feel of real market conditions. The platform lets you only buy NIFTY options for the coming week's expiry at the moment.

Apart from trading options, Lite provides a dashboard of news and events and real-time price quotes of various trading instruments like Bitcoin, Crude Oil, Indice Futures, and Currencies.

It also provides an easy way to manage positions and analyze them through bite-sized trading reports. Lite is a fully-responsive app and can be used on both mobile and web platforms. I haven't deployed it in production since this isn't a monetized project.

Moreover, the exchanges usually charge a bomb for real-time option prices, so it updates option prices only roughly every hour. This helps me take trades in very volatile markets, a few aggressive trades at times, and try different trading setups without blowing up my trading account.

The reports can help you analyze your trading performance.

Lite helps me get better at trading by practicing my trading setups in real market conditions.

Using Bubble and other no-code tools to build Lite

I've used Bubble, Google Sheets, and Stein to build this application. Bubble is mostly the frontend of the application pulling data from Google sheets while Stein pulls option prices data from websites and stores it in google sheets which is the hourly updated database of the application.

The system works perfectly for it. This setup was primarily required because I didn't have direct access to the option prices data via the exchange, so had to implement a workaround.

Stein is basically a very good scraper that pulls data from websites, stores it into google sheets, and converts the google sheet into an API. Bubble pulls data from google sheets via the API and updates option prices when a trade is taken or the reload icon is clicked.

I'm amazed at the potential of no-code tools and the many uses for them. The sky's the limit when it comes to what you can build and accomplish – all without needing to be a software programmer.

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Thanks for sharing your story with us, Ansh! You can follow his no-code work here.