An Adaptive Stock Tracker for

Personalized Trading Advice

Jungsoon Yoo Melinda Gervasio and Pat Langley

Computer Science Department Institute for the Study of Learning and Expertise
Middle Tennessee State University 2164 Staunton Court, Palo Alto, CA 94306
Murfreesboro, TN 37132 USA fgervasio, langleyg@isle.org
csyoojp@mtsu.edu

ABSTRACT Information ltering systems address the problem of in-

The Sto k Tra ker is an adaptive re ommendation system formation overload by fa toring out irrelevant ontent and
for trading sto ks that automati ally a quires ontent-based redu ing the amount of information that the user must ex-
models of user preferen es to tailor its buy and sell advi e. amine. Su h systems ould give an investor more opportuni-
The system in orporates an eÆ ient algorithm that exploits ties to examine potentially protable sto ks by eliminating
the xed stru ture of user models and relies on unobtru- obviously nonprotable ones. This task of separating inter-
sive data-gathering te hniques. In this paper, we des ribe esting from uninteresting information an be viewed as a
our approa h to personalized re ommendation and its imple- lassi ation task. However, sin e dierent people have in-
mentation in this domain. We also dis uss experiments that dividual tastes, information ltering should be personalized.
evaluate the system's behavior on both human subje ts and This an be a hieved through user models or proles that
syntheti users. The results suggest that the Sto k Tra ker embody the preferen es of a user or group of users. More-
an rapidly adapt its advi e to dierent types of users. over, su h proles an be learned from tra es of intera tions
with individual users.
In this paper, we des ribe the Sto k Tra ker, an adap-
Categories and Subject Descriptors tive user interfa e that re ommends sto ks based on an in-
H.5 [Information Systems Appli ations℄: Information dividual's trading prole. The system utilizes this prole
Interfa es and Presentation to rank sto ks, and it revises the prole based on tra es of
user behavior. We have evaluated this prototype experimen-
General Terms tally on histori al re ords from the S&P 500 sto k market
Design, experimentation, human fa tors and obtained positive preliminary results. In the next se -
tion, we dene the sto k tra king problem formally. We
Keywords then dis uss our te hni al approa h, in luding the overall
Adaptive user interfa es, ma hine learning, user modeling, system ar hite ture, engineering de isions, and implemen-
personalization, information ltering tation issues. After this, we present some hypotheses about
the Sto k Tra ker's ability to adapt to individual users and
des ribe the systemati experiments we ran to test them. In
1. INTRODUCTION losing, we review related work and onsider some dire tions
With the advent of the Internet, a wealth of information for future resear h.
awaits anyone within the tou h of a few keystrokes. Un-
fortunately, the desired ontent is often buried in massive 2. THE PROBLEM OF STOCK TRACKING
amounts of irrelevant information and ea h user must ull Through the Internet, ordinary people an now a ess nearly
through the extraneous material. For example, online bro- 3500 ompanies that make up the New York Sto k Ex-
kerage rms now let one he k sto k pri es and make trans- hange, almost 4500 se urities in the NASDAQ omposite,
a tions through a Web browser. With all the sto ks available and many more sto ks are available through various Web
throughout the world, there are more opportunities to make sites. The values of these sto ks hange ontinuously, while
or lose money, but only if one has the time and energy to news and trading information regarding a ompany's nan-
follow those sto ks. Tra king tens of thousands of sto ks is ial status are available instantly. This makes it virtually
beyond the apability of any single user. impossible for anyone to keep a lose wat h on more than a
handful of sto ks.
Many ommer ial Web sites partially address this problem
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for by presenting buy re ommendations on a small set of sto ks.
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are However, few of them make omplementary sell re ommen-
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies dations, as this would require knowledge of ea h user's port-
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to folio. Furthermore, dierent traders have dierent invest-
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific
permission and/or a fee.
ment styles, in that some are aggressive risk takers and oth-
IUI’03, January 12–15, 2003, Miami, Florida, USA. ers are more on erned with long-term returns. Existing
Copyright 2003 ACM 1-58113-586-6/03/0001_..$5.00. sites do not typi ally ater to su h individual preferen es.
 3. AN APPROACH TO STOCK TRACKING
To reiterate, the Sto k Tra ker addresses the problem of
information overload through a personalized approa h to
information ltering. By onsidering personal user prefer-
en es, the system lters trading information in an individu-
alized manner, presenting only information that a user nds
interesting. In this se tion, we present the details of the
Sto k Tra ker. After presenting the ar hite ture, we elabo-
rate on the graphi al interfa e, the re ommendation module,
and the user modeling omponent.
3.1 System Architecture
The Sto k Tra ker is built on a lient-server ar hite ture,
with information ltering, re ord keeping, and adaptation
Figure 1: Ar hite ture for the Sto k Tra ker. performed on the server, while the user interfa e and related
omputing are done on the lient, as Figure 1 depi ts. The
server ontains the data pro essing unit, re ommendation
Our goal is to build an adaptive sto k tra king system that module, user modeler, information manager, and ommuni-
a quires an individualized prole automati ally through in- ation unit. The data pro essing unit onverts raw input
tera tion with a user, then utilizes this prole to generate (i.e., urrent sto k readings and histori al trading informa-
personalized trading advi e. Adaptive sto k tra king an tion) into reports that ontain buy and sell re ommenda-
be viewed as a spe ialized ase of the more generi task of tions for the user. It relies on the re ommendation module
ltering events in a high-dimensional spa e. Given many to make appropriate suggestions for ea h sto k based on in-
ontinuous variables that hange over time and online data dividual user proles. The user modeler onstru ts these
for these variables sampled at regular intervals, the infor- proles based on user responses to previous re ommenda-
mation ltering task is to nd trends or events in the data tions. The information manager re ords tra es of a user's
that the user will nd signi ant. intera tions with the system and also keeps tra k of user
What is \signi ant" depends on the spe i s of the prob- portfolios. Finally, the ommuni ation unit manages the
lem domain. For example, if the task involves monitoring information into and out of the server.
events in a omplex assembly plant, a signi ant event may A lient ontains a ommuni ation unit and a graphi al
be a divergen e from planned developments that reveals the user interfa e (GUI) omponent. The ommuni ation unit
possibility of an a ident. Signi an e an also depend on performs a tivities that orrespond to the server's ommuni-
the user, whi h suggests a lear role for personalization. For ation unit. Meanwhile, the GUI presents all reports to the
instan e, depending on a user's expertise, an information user and a epts ommands su h as buying/selling sto ks
ltering system might alert the user at dierent times or and viewing portfolios, along with requests for additional
present information at dierent levels. By automati ally nan ial information on parti ular ompanies. The system
adapting its behavior to individual needs and preferen es, simulates trading using histori al S&P 500 market data; it
an information lter an further in rease its utility as an mimi s a real sto k trading s enario by generating infor-
assistant in omplex temporal domains. mation one (simulated) day at a time and letting a trader
We have built a prototype sto k tra king system that de ide the sto ks, if any, to buy and/or sell on ea h day.
learns personal preferen es ast within a de ision framework
based on a pure te hni al analysis [1℄. That is, the analy- 3.2 Interface for Unobtrusive Data Collection
sis uses only temporal sto k trading data (e.g., sto k pri e, The Sto k Tra ker in ludes a graphi al interfa e, shown in
trade volume), and not any nan ial information about the Figure 2, for presenting sto k information, making re om-
ompany. Thus, we an state the sto k tra king problem mendations, and a epting the user's trading requests. The
formally as a temporal information ltering task: system's ranked list of re ommendations appears in the up-
Given: A user and his asso iated prole; per left. Details about the highlighted sto k are presented
in the intera tive graph in the bottom half of the window.
Given: A large set of sto ks available to buy and sell; The upper right presents a summary of the urrent sto k,
Given: Online trading information for these sto ks olle ted together with the system's re ommendation and a tion but-
at regular intervals; and tons for the user to buy or sell the sto k. The user may
Given: Strategies for how to make a trading de ision; also, but need not, provide additional feedba k on the re -
ommendation, su h as li king on \Thank you" to indi ate
Find: A list of trading re ommendations in an order that agreement with a warning or spe ifying a desired alternative
re e ts the user's priorities. in the ase of an una eptable re ommendation.
To make personalized re ommendations, the Sto k Tra ker Although we have not systemati ally tested this graphi-
relies on user proles that embody individual preferen es. al interfa e for usability, we have tried to adhere to known
These proles are a quired automati ally by alling ma hine prin iples, su h as Shneiderman's [20℄ eight golden rules of
learning te hniques on user intera tion tra es. The system interfa e design and Karat's [7℄ prin iples of usability. Sin e
gathers data unobtrusively, taking advantage of an interfa e the system alters its advi e based on intera tions with the
design that obtains useful information from a user's natural user, we were also parti ularly on erned about its meth-
intera tions. In the next se tion, we present the details of ods for obtaining user feedba k. Some approa hes to per-
our approa h to adaptive sto k tra king. sonalization require users to state their preferen es expli -
 the sell warning , while all other situations orrespond to
do nothing . Although MACD spe ies the onditions for
ea h a tion, the Sto k Tra ker must still determine exa tly
when to make ea h re ommendation with respe t to when
the short-term average rosses the long-term average. Dif-
ferent hoi es orrespond to dierent risk levels and apture
dierent preferen es about how soon to give buy and sell
warnings. The MACD te hnique gives, in some sense, ob-
je tively optimal buy and sell re ommendations, but our pri-
mary obje tive in building an information ltering assistant
is to help users make their own de isions more eÆ iently,
rather than to make de isions for them.
Ea h de ision rule onsists of a set of numeri onstraints
on temporal sto k-trading attributes, su h as the rate of
in rease in the long-term moving average or the dieren e
between the long-term and short-term averages. A de ision
rule applies when all of its onstraints are satised|that is,
the value of ea h orresponding attribute satises the on-
straint. For example, we an en ode \the long-term average
is in reasing" with the onstraint (LTA slope  ). By us-
ing a parameter  instead of zero, we allow for dieren es in
how mu h a sto k pri e must be in reasing for an individual
to onsider it. Thus, while MACD denes the form of the
onstraints, the Sto k Tra ker an alter its re ommendation
behavior by in orporating dierent threshold values.
Figure 2: Graphi al interfa e of the Sto k Tra ker.
3.4 Personalizing Stock Recommendation
itly through long questionnaires or indi ate dire tly whether The Sto k Tra ker a hieves personalized re ommendation
ea h re ommendation is good or bad. Instead, we prefer un- through the use of individual user proles that apture trad-
obtrusive data olle tion te hniques and have designed the ing preferen es. A prole onsists of four binary lassiers,
Sto k Tra ker's interfa e so that it an obtain useful feed- one for every a tion other than do nothing, ea h of whi h
ba k through a user's natural intera tion. For example, a renders a membership de ision on ea h item (i.e., whether
user an provide positive feedba k by pur hasing a sto k it is a positive instan e of the lass). In the Sto k Tra ker,
that the system re ommends he should buy. By selling the ea h binary lassier embodies a MACD de ision rule and
same sto k, the trader gives negative feedba k. Be ause makes a re ommendation if its onstraints are satised. For
more expli it feedba k is also helpful, we also provide this ea h sto k, the re ommendation module sele ts the re om-
fa ility, but the Sto k Tra ker an adapt its behavior to users mendation with the highest asso iated onden e value, or
even without su h information. do nothing if no lassier re ommends an a tion. This on-
den e value is then used to present the sele ted re ommen-
3.3 Recommending Trading Actions dations on dierent sto ks in a ranked list.
At the heart of the Sto k Tra ker are the personalized trad- The system builds lassiers from training examples ex-
ing re ommendations that it makes to ea h user. The system tra ted from tra es of the user's intera tions. Brie y, the
bases these re ommendations on a te hni al analysis alled user an either a ept or reje t ea h re ommendation. An
Moving Average Convergen e Divergen e (MACD) [1℄ that a eptan e indi ates that the re ommendation was orre t
examines the dieren e between long-term and short-term and is thus a positive example of the orresponding lassier.
moving averages to identify rossing points. These points in- Similarly, a reje tion produ es a negative example. The sys-
di ate market turns and thus orrespond to opportunities for tem also uses positive examples for one lassier as negative
buying or selling sto k. Spe i ally, the time to buy sto k examples for others. Although there exist many well-known
is when both the long-term and short-term averages are in- supervised indu tion algorithms, we opted to devise a new,
reasing and the short-term average has ex eeded the long- more eÆ ient algorithm that exploits the xed stru ture of
term average. Conversely, the time to sell is when the aver- the user model, as Table 1 summarizes.
ages are de reasing and the short-term average has dipped Re all that ea h de ision rule ( lassier) onsists of a set
lower than the long-term average. We ompute short-term of onstraints, ea h of whi h orresponds to a parti ular nu-
averages over nine days and long-term averages over 18 days. meri attribute. Every onstraint spe ies a threshold on
We use MACD be ause it is a simple te hnique that is still the attribute value, above (below) whi h the onstraint is
popular in sto k market analysis. satised. The goal of the learning algorithm is thus to nd
We onvert MACD into de ision rules for re ommending a set of thresholds that will result in re ommendations on-
ve dierent a tions: buy , buy warning , sell , sell warning , sistent with the user's a tions. If we order the examples a -
and do nothing . The buy and sell rules orrespond dire tly ording to in reasing attribute values, we an evaluate an-
to those just des ribed. A buy warning o urs when a re om- didate thresholds for a  onstraint based on how well they
mendation to buy is likely in the near future|that is, both predi t positive examples above the threshold and negative
averages are in reasing but the short-term average remains examples below it, and similarly for  onstraints. Also,
lower than the long-term average. Similar logi applies to sin e the onstraints form a onjun tive set of onditions,
Table 1: Learning algorithm for the Sto k Tra ker the system's re ommendations, with higher per entages or-
responding to better performan e. We an also measure the
Learn(examples ) time taken to omplete transa tions. If the Sto k Tra ker
For ea h lassier in fbuy,buy warning,sell,sell warningg: makes good re ommendations and ranks them highly, the
LearnOne( lassier , examples , lassier 's onstraints) user should exe ute his transa tions rapidly. Thus, we ex-
pe ted the a eptan e rate for a given user would gradually
LearnOne( lassier , examples , onstraints ) in rease while the time per transa tion would de rease.
 Sort examples in in reasing order a ording to the at- To test this hypothesis, we ondu ted an experiment with
tribute value of the next onstraint in onstraints . twelve human users who had various levels of sto k trading
 Identify threshold andidates for splitting the examples expertise. The subje ts attended a brief orientation session
into positive and negative regions. to learn how to use the system, and we asked them to om-
 Set onstraint threshold of lassier to the best split plete one pra ti e session to familiarize themselves with its
among andidates based on Evaluate(examples , split ). operation. The study simulated daily trading based on 2001
 LearnOne( lassier , Subset(examples , split ), remain- S&P data, with ea h subje t intera ting with the system for
ing onstraints ). at least 50 transa tions or suggestions, but having the op-
tion to nish the experiment over multiple sessions. Ea h
user began the study with $20,000 in his portfolio, roughly
thresholds for remaining onstraints need only be onsid- half of whi h was already invested in sele ted sto ks. As the
ered for examples in the region that satises the onstraint. subje t intera ted with the Sto k Tra ker, we measured the
We tried a variety of methods for evaluating andidate time taken to omplete ea h transa tion and the a eptan e
splits, in luding information gain and various metri s based rate, that is, the number of user a tions mat hing the re -
on pre ision and re all, whi h are often used to evaluate in- ommendations divided by the total number of su h a tions.
formation retrieval systems. We found the F measure [14℄, Figure 3 shows the a eptan e rate as a fun tion of the
a weighted ombination of pre ision and re all, to provide number of user a tions (i.e., training ases). At rst glan e,
the best behavior. Pre ision indi ates the probability that a the results are somewhat surprising, in that they show an
positive instan e labeled as positive by the lassier is truly initial de rease in a eptan e rate followed by an in rease.
positive, whereas re all gives the probability of orre tly They are also somewhat disappointing, with the nal a -
identifying all positive instan es. In our ase, pre ision is eptan e rate not going mu h higher than the initial level.
the number of positive examples in the orre t partition di- However, analysis of user tra es and interviews with subje ts
vided by the number of instan es in that partition, while suggested that the initial a eptan e rate was arti ially in-
re all is the number of positive instan es in the orre t par- ated be ause new users tended to fo us on expanding their
tition divided by the number of positives in both partitions. portfolio, basi ally ignoring the initial one provided. They
A primary motivation for the development of an eÆ ient did this mainly by sele ting from the Sto k Tra ker's buy
algorithm is that learning is ondu ted online; that is, af- re ommendations, whi h produ ed the high initial a ep-
ter every intera tion with the user that yields positive or tan e rate. However, as users began to monitor these sto ks,
negative examples, the user modeler updates the user pro- they also started making transa tions that diered from the
le. This lets the Sto k Tra ker adapt qui kly to individual system's re ommendations, de reasing the a eptan e rate.
traders. To give the system a reasonable starting point, we But as the Sto k Tra ker gained experien e with the user's
employ a default model, orresponding to the prole of an preferen es, it began making re ommendations they found
average user, that it indu es from a default training set that a eptable, in reasing the s ore again.
represents feedba k from su h a user. By atta hing a weight Figure 4 also shows the average amount of time spent on
to these default ases, we an vary the degree to whi h the ea h transa tion as a fun tion of the number of user a tions,
system relies on them during its model onstru tion. whi h de reases early on but then levels out. We suspe t
that this trend is due partly to users be oming more ee -
4. EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION tive at intera ting with the Sto k Tra ker as they gained
experien e with it, despite their pra ti e before we began
Our goal in developing the Sto k Tra ker was to help users olle ting tra e data. However, the redu tion in transa -
identify more qui kly sto ks to buy or sell based on their tion time is also onsistent with the view that the system's
individual interests. By adapting its model of the user's adaptation to users improved its ability to rank a eptable
trading preferen es based on intera tion tra es, the system re ommendations more highly, thus redu ing users' eort at
tailors its re ommendations. As the Sto k Tra ker gains nding sto ks to buy or sell.
experien e with a user, it should be ome better at re om-
mending a tions that he will a ept. Here, we des ribe the 4.2 An Experiment with Synthetic Subjects
results of experiments ondu ted with human and syntheti The experimental results just des ribed are somewhat am-
subje ts that we designed to test this primary hypothesis. biguous, and interviews of subje ts revealed they often had
trouble understanding how to pro eed during their early in-
4.1 An Experiment with Human Subjects tera tions with the Sto k Tra ker. Thus, it seems likely that
The basi question we want to answer is whether the Sto k the ee ts of the system's adaptation to inexperien ed users
Tra ker an adapt its re ommendations to dierent users. were onfounded with those subje ts learning simultane-
We an evaluate the system's performan e by measuring ously about the investment pro ess themselves. In ontrast,
its su ess in re ommending trading a tions about various we designed the Sto k Tra ker for knowledgeable traders
sto ks that users nd a eptable. Spe i ally, for ea h indi- who have lear preferen es about the sto ks in whi h they
vidual, we an measure the per entage of times he a epts prefer to invest.
Figure 3: Performan e of Sto k Tra ker with human Figure 4: Performan e of Sto k Tra ker with human
subje ts in terms of a eptan e rate. subje ts in terms of time spent on ea h transa tion.

One response would be to repeat our experiment with a other from the rest of the list. We then ompared the re -
more experien ed population of users, but we had no ready ommendations of the urrent model on these sto ks to the
a ess to su h a subje t pool. Moreover, as both Drum- user's a tions (as predi ted by the syntheti user model).
mond et al. [6℄ and Gervasio et al. [7℄ have argued, syntheti As before, we measured the system's a eptan e rate as the
subje ts oer advantages over human users in that they let number of mat hes divided by the total number of a tions.
one eliminate improvement due to learning by subje ts and Finally, the Sto k Tra ker updated its model based on the
they generally make it easier to run arefully ontrolled and user's a tions in preparation for the next day. For ea h
repeatable experiments. Thus, we de ided to onstru t a user, we also ran a ontrol ondition where no adaptation
set of su h syntheti users to serve as subje ts in a se ond o urred, in that user intera tion did not modify the model.
experimental study. Figure 5 shows the Sto k Tra ker's a eptan e rate as a
As before, we wanted to determine whether the Sto k fun tion of the number of user a tions, averaged over the 200
Tra ker an tailor its re ommendations to individual users. users. The graph shows that the adaptive version a hieves
Re all that the system onstru ts user models of a xed an a eptan e rate of about 98% after fewer than 30 user
form based on the MACD te hni al analysis. By varying the a tions (i.e., training examples). In ontrast, without learn-
threshold parameters in the model, we an ee tively reate ing, the a eptan e rate was only about 88%.1 These re-
users with dierent investment styles. We an interpret the sults with syntheti subje ts support our hypothesis that
a tions that a given model predi ts as the a tions made by the Sto k tra ker an su essfully adapt to experien ed in-
the orresponding syntheti user. As in the previous experi- vestors with dierent trading preferen es.
ment, we utilized a eptan e rate as the dependent variable
to measure su ess, and we predi ted that this performan e 4.3 An Experiment with Default Models
measure would in rease as the Sto k Tra ker gained expe- As we have explained, the Sto k Tra ker initializes user mod-
rien e with ea h subje t. However, our syntheti users did els with a default training set. This is primarily to provide
not attempt to mimi laten y in making a sele tion, so we reasonable re ommendations even for a new user. However,
did not measure transa tion time in this study. this relian e on a default model an also ae t the Sto k
To test our hypothesis about a eptan e rate, our exper- Tra ker's ability to adapt to users. A ru ial issue with
iment in luded 200 syntheti investors sampled from a uni- adaptive interfa es, parti ularly ones that learn online, is
form distribution that ranged from very onservative to very rapid adaptation from few intera tions. Thus, it is impor-
aggressive. We repeated the previous experimental setup by tant that a default model provide good initial advi e without
testing ea h user in a simulated online fashion on 2001 S&P sa ri ing the ability to learn individual preferen es qui kly.
data. We started ea h user at a randomly hosen date from Three questions arise with respe t to default models for
the rst 50 days of the year and with the same initial port- sto k tra king. The rst on erns the trading strategy that
folio. We initialized ea h user model with a default training it should embody. Preliminary studies suggested that a
set, as des ribed earlier. For ea h day, the Sto k Tra ker moderate model (i.e., neither too onservative nor too ag-
used the urrent model for a given user to generate a list of gressive) oered the best tradeo between re ommendations
re ommended transa tions, ordered by their asso iated on- 1
den e value. We ltered the list to ex lude any sell or sell The slight upward trend for the nonadaptive ondition sug-
gests that the a tions for the sto k trading situations later
warning re ommendations for sto ks the user did not own. in the year were easier to predi t for the default model. This
To simulate regular user behavior, we then randomly pi ked ould be be ause the latter part of the year was more similar
for evaluation ve of the top ten re ommendations plus one to the 2000 S&P data on whi h we based this model.
Figure 5: A eptan e rate for Sto k Tra ker re om- Figure 6: A eptan e rate for Sto k Tra ker re om-
mendations with and without learning. mendations with dierent default model weights.
the user would a ept and those he would reje t, thus giving approa hes, sto k tra king is a temporally sensitive task that
useful feedba k for updating the model. The se ond issue requires the ontinuous monitoring of numeri variables to
involves the size of the training set used to onstru t the de- dete t trends or hanges over time. This requires identifying
fault model. We settled on 200 training ases after prelimi- features that apture these trends and employing te hniques
nary experiments showed that this number oers reasonable to gather su h information for the user. Perhaps the los-
initial advi e for dierent types of users. est work in text ltering omes from Languillon [13℄, who
A third question, whi h we set out to answer more for- studies the problem of hanging ontent, but his task still
mally, on erns the appropriate weight pla ed on the default involves ltering stati do uments, rather than items like
training set. Smaller weights give more importan e to the sto ks that are themselves hanging over time.
data generated by user intera tion; for example, a default Ma hine learning approa hes to personalized re ommen-
weight of 0.1 means that it takes ten default examples to dation are often divided into two broad lasses. Collabo-
have the same ee t as one example based on a user a tion. rative approa hes [11,19℄ make re ommendations based on
For dierent weight settings, we are about the initial a ep- user similarity as eviden ed by their item ratings, whereas
tan e rate, the asymptoti a eptan e rate, and the speed ontent-based approa hes [12℄ make re ommendations based
of onvergen e. We predi ted that an intermediate weight on item similarity as eviden ed by their ontent des riptions.
on the default model would give the best tradeo between Collaborative methods perform well when there is substan-
initial a eptan e rate and rapid adaptation. tial overlap between the users and the items they have rated,
To test this hypothesis, we reated a default training set but fare less well for users with idiosyn rati behavior and
using 200 randomly hosen instan es from the 2000 S&P on items for whi h few ratings exist. Content-based ap-
data, whi h we labeled with the predi tions of a moder- proa hes like the Sto k Tra ker do not suer from these
ate syntheti user. We then ran an experiment with 200 limitations, as they learn individual preferen es over item
syntheti users, in a simulated online fashion on 2001 S&P attributes. However, they require ontent des riptions for
data, as in the previous study. We examined three dierent items and thus are better suited to domains where su h in-
weights for the default model { 1.0, 0.1, and 0.01 { whi h formation is available. Resear h on ombining ollaborative
produ ed the results in Figure 6. As expe ted, the interme- and ontent-based te hniques [2,3℄ attempts to address the
diate weight (0.1) gave a better balan e between initial and limitations of ea h and ould prove useful in our domain.
asymptoti behavior than did the high weight (1.0). How- Early systems for personalized re ommendation often im-
ever, the low weight (0.01) produ ed a very similar learning posed a signi ant burden on users to provide expli it feed-
urve to the intermediate ondition, whi h we did not anti i- ba k on system advi e. More re ent work has proposed so-
pate, suggesting the Sto k Tra ker's behavior is less sensitive lutions ranging from asking the user to rate the most in-
to this parameter than predi ted.2 formative items [16℄, using syntheti users to augment the
user pool [17℄, and using impli it feedba k to approximate
5. RELATED AND FUTURE WORK expli it ratings [5,9℄. Rather than use low-level events su h
as mouse and keyboard tra king to indi ate interest or ap-
Mu h of the resear h on adaptive information ltering has proval, the Sto k Tra ker relies on the impli it feedba k
fo used on do ument retrieval or text ategorization, espe- [4,7,12℄ that omes naturally in the ourse of the user in-
ially for appli ations related to the Internet su h as Web tera ting with the system|a epting re ommendations to
browsing [2,15℄, e-mail pro essing [18℄, and news reading buy or sell sto ks, or exe uting alternative a tions.
[4,11℄. Unlike the problems that have been ta kled by these The experimental results presented in the previous se tion
2
Be ause it produ ed reasonable behavior, we relied on the provide eviden e that the Sto k Tra ker's an adapt rapidly
intermediate setting in the experiment on syntheti and hu- to users with dierent investment styles. However, there re-
man users reported earlier in the se tion. main additional issues to investigate. We should repli ate
the study on experien ed syntheti users with human sub- [6℄ C. Drummond, R. Holte, and D. Iones u. A elerat-
je ts, ensuring that users have a reasonable knowledge of ing browsing by automati ally inferring a user's sear h
trading. Additional studies with human subje ts should ex- goal. Pro eedings of the Eighth Knowledge-Based Soft-
amine whether user models based on the MACD framework ware Engineering Conferen e , pages 160{167, 1993.
are suÆ ient to apture preferen es a ross a wide range of [7℄ M. T. Gervasio, W. Iba, and P. Langley. Learning user
users. We an easily repla e the proles utilized in the Sto k evaluation fun tions for adaptive s heduling assistan e.
Tra ker's modeling omponent with any one of the many Pro eedings of the Sixteenth International Conferen e
te hni al analysis methods available [1℄. We an also design on Ma hine Learning , pages 152{161, 1999.
syntheti users for alternative model types and evaluate the [8℄ Global Industry Classi ation Standard. Available at
Sto k Tra ker's ability to adapt to them. http://www.spglobal. om/GICSIndexDo ument.PDF.
An additional open question on erns how to en ode and [9℄ J. Goe ks and J. Shavlik. Learning users' interests by
a quire more omplex models. One approa h would impose unobtrusively observing their normal behavior. Pro-
a hierar hy over the available sto ks, su h as that dened in eedings of the Fourth International Conferen e on Au-
the Global Industry Classi ation Standard [8℄. We ould tonomous Agents , pages 129{132, 2000.
extend the Sto k Tra ker to adapt to users' preferen es for [10℄ J. Karat. Evolving the s ope of user- entered design.
ea h node in the hierar hy. This approa h would apture Communi ations of the ACM, 40(7): 33{38, 1997.
user preferen es for dierent types of sto ks, su h as those [11℄ J. Konstan, B. Miller, D. Maltz., J. Herlo ker, L. Gor-
for software ompanies vs. automobile ompanies, but prob- don, and J. Riedl. GroupLens: Applying ollaborative
ably at the expense of a slower learning rate than for a sim- ltering to usenet news. Communi ations of the ACM ,
pler user model. 40(3): 77{87, 1997.
In summary, the Adaptive Sto k Tra ker is an informa- [12℄ P. Langley. User modeling in adaptive interfa es. Pro-
tion ltering system that rapidly tailors its trading re om- eedings of the Seventh International Conferen e on
mendations to users with dierent investment styles. The User Modeling , pages 357{370, 1999.
advisor does this by a quiring a model of user preferen es [13℄ C. Lanquillon. Information ltering in hanging do-
automati ally from tra es of user intera tions, utilizing an mains. Pro eedings of the Workshop on Ma hine Learn-
eÆ ient algorithm that exploits the xed stru ture of the ing for Information Filtering, pages 41{48, 1999.
user model. The Sto k Tra ker does not require users to [14℄ D. D. Lewis, R. E. S hapire, J. P. Callan, and R. Papka.
ll in lengthy questionnaires about their preferen es or to Training algorithms for linear text lassiers. Pro eed-
provide detailed feedba k about its re ommendations. In- ings of the Nineteenth International Conferen e on Re-
stead, it olle ts tra es in an unobtrusive manner and ex- sear h and Development in Information Retrieval ,pages
tra ts training instan es from its natural intera tion with 298{306, 1996.
the user. Experimental results with both human and syn- [15℄ H. Lieberman. Letizia: An agent that assists Web
theti subje ts provide support for this approa h, suggesting browsing. Pro eedings of the Fourteenth International
that the Sto k Tra ker learns to make in reasingly a ept- Joint Conferen e on Arti ial Intelligen e pages 924{
able re ommendations as it intera ts with individual users. 929, 1995.
[16℄ A. M. Rashid, I. Albert, D. Cosley, S. Lam, S. M. M -
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Nee, J. A. Konstan, and J. Riedl. Getting to know
you: Learning new user preferen es in re ommender
The resear h reported in this paper was supported in part systems. Pro eedings of the International Conferen e
by Grant NCC 2-1220 from NASA Ames Resear h Center. on Intelligent User Interfa es , pages 127{134, 2002.
We thank Stephanie Sage and Daniel Shapiro for their on- [17℄ B. M. Sarwar, J. A. Konstan, A. Bor hers, J. Herlo ker,
tributions to the formulation of the problem. B. Miller, and J. Riedl. Using ltering agents to im-
prove predi tion quality in the GroupLens resear h ol-
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