I was trying to come up with a tool to visualize financial instruments,
namely index future contracts, aka index futures. It's located at
http://www.geocities.com/kirillka -> Repel 3.2.

An index future can be described by the following variables:
        * FV - Fair Value, price of the future as determined according to
specific financial model and based on the macro- and micro-economic
parameters;
        * S - current index level (aka "spot price"), measured in the
index currency (for example, for Dow Jones index currency is USD, for FTSE
index it's British Pounds);
        * r - interest rate, % divided by 100 (i.e. the absolute value);
        * q - dividend yield, % divided by 100 (i.e. the absolute value);
        * T - time to expiration of the future, expressed in years
        * rich-cheap - a ratio that can loosely determine whether the
trader should sell a future of buy it; it's effectively a ratio between
actual future price as traded on the exchange and its Fair Value FV.

These variables are interconnected by the following equation:

        FV = S * exp ((r-q)*T)                          (1)

The Visualization tool uses the following idioms: 
        * dots represent futures
        * higher latitudes stand for higher rich-cheap value
        * differently-colored dots symbolize futures of different indices

There are 10 indices on the applet, each of which has 10 associated future
contracts. Their names, index prices,  and future prices are random
numbers taken from reasonable ranges. 

It will be easy to hook the applet up to the real market data source since
it can accept a URL as a parameter; it will attempt to read the prices and
other info from that url. If the URL parameter is not available it
generates the necessary data randomly (see getFutures() method).

Here are some additional facts about the UI. Placing a mouse pointer over
any dot shows you the information about this future contract: it's
underlier (that's the index it's derived upon), its own ticker symbol,
rich-cheap ratio, index price and future price.

Alternatively you can highlight a future by clicking it, and the
highlighted dot will become black.

The higher (more towards the North pole) the dot is located on the sphere,
the higher its rich-cheap ratio is, and the more profitable is it to sell
the future at the moment. The numbers next to the North and South poles
show min and max rich-cheap values for the set of futures currently
pictures.

The page also contains the Javascript portion that consists of 2
pieces: a simple Fair Value calculator and Liveconnect piece for
communication between it and the applet.

The Fair Value Calculator is a simple HTML form that implements equation
(1) and can solve it for any of its 5 variables. You just need to check
the box next to a variable that you are solving for, and click on the
"Calc free param" button. 

One can either input the numbers into the Fair Value Calculator manually,
or publish the numbers about a highlighted future on the applet (using
Liveconnect). To do that just click on a dot that represents the future
contract that you are interested in, and it's variables will be displayed
in the FV Calc fields and it will automatically solve equation (1) for the
Fair Value.

Finally, one can test different market scenarios by dragging the 3
sliders: Int Rate, Div Yld and Days to Expiration. 

The Energy slider doesn't have financial interpretation, it just affects
the energy of repulsion between the dots on the sphere.

As for the Temperature slider, it adds random noise to the dots'
positions: from 0 to +/- 50% of noise.

In conclusion, Professor, I would like to thank you for the great class! I
really enjoyed it. What I liked most was the constant flow of original
ideas and concepts that you and the students demonstrated. I might have
been taking the wrong classes in the past but this was very refreshing! :)