>That't a piece of cake. I have a master degree in economics, specificaaly finance. And also other guy who is part of the team.
>But I guess they will give you the algorithms and detailed design...?

The BIG thing in finance is "prescience", the abilty to model the future. If a "demo" COM or API could be built that offered Monte Carlo Modeling or Black-Scholes (forgot the spelling) - and some of the "newer" models - that a MS analyst could download and add-on to a spread sheet. That might be one of those trail ware guys - but you'd have to do some market analysis to assure it would be worth the effort.

The bookkeeping (or "actuals") may be a place to look - but the real money is in predicting what foreign exchange rates will look like next month, in six months and one year. Hedge accounting.

Ecomomically - the world is in "la-La" land - especially US economics - the US is borrowing almost 2 billion a day from China and Japan. You may have noticed the neo-con uproar over China's refusal to float their Huang. Since China holds several hundred billions in US treasuries, you can see, that id they float the huang - their treasurey reserves (the US debt they own) will loose even more value. The dollar has lost 38% of it's "worth" since 2001. Can you imagine how low it will go if China starts dumping treasuries.

But their is another finance market. Emissions! Kyoto has opened a new market. If you can measure emission losses from hydro-carbon processes (storage and refining) the you might be able to sell such an app to energy companies interested in trading emissions credits (securities).

An emission credit for 1 ton of Hydro Carbons was selling for 25 THiusand US a few years back. That number should go up.

The math is similar to - but not quite as exquisite as - financial calculations (thermodynamics and ideal gas laws) - but the market is broad. Everything from a truck loading operation to strage and refinery would fit.

Now I have one for storage and tanker ship loading - but it's in english - there are countries in South America , like Venezuela (maybe Peru) that have joined Kyoto.

Funny thing - I have one - but it needs to be in Spanish (i think) to get into those markets - and I would need a partner in South America to help me sell it!

Thier are othe pieces to - like NOx and SOx (Nitrogen and Sulfure oxides) that can be quantified as well as so called "orphaned" losses - that would also have value for companies looking to sell or buy emission credits!