Portfolio manager

What is it?

My internship with Baillie Gifford took the form of a 4-week virtual placement. During the placement the majority of my time was dedicated to the online training platform Pluralsight. Here we were encouraged by BG to learn the basics or the React library and anything else we wished to learn. In the latter 2 weeks of the placement my colleague and I decided to undertake a small project to put together what we had learned up until that point. The project itself ended up serving as a useful learning curve as well – the backend of the app makes use of different APIs and databases which helped grow my web dev skill set in some crucial areas. Given more time the project would have a larger list of features including user login, portfolio overviews.

Buying stocks

The primary function of the app is to buy stocks and monitor their price, which is updated with real values every minute, and aim to make a profit. The user uses the landing page to search for shares but company or company token, once the user has found the stock they wish to buy they can open the modal menu to purchase the shares for their selected portfolio.

The user searches for a specific trust or company.
The app shows the user more details about the search results and allows the user to select which portfolio they wish to buy the shares for.

Managing portfolios

The user can view each portfolio they create and buy stocks for. Each portfolio shows all shares and their total value, as well as an indication to show whether or not the user has made a profit in the shares value since they were bought.

Closing notes

This project served it’s purpose well in terms of putting into practise what I was learning during my internship. The project covered more than just the React library, we also considered the agile development workflow, using APIs and connecting the app to a third party database. Ideally with morwe time the app would see a user login system with admin users with elevated positions. Portfolio analytics would also be a much larger feature of the app. React offers a new approach to web development, lending itself to a more function-oriented design rather than grouping different components based on whatever technology it is written in.