Specification and execution of composite trading activities

With the growing number of trading opportunities available online, software tools designedto act on behalf of human traders are increasingly being used to automate trading activities.The next logical step in this evolution is the automation of composite trading activities designedto fulfill complex user goals and requirements. In this paper, we describe a model for specify-ing composite trading activities involving concurrent and interrelated negotiations with multipleparties and heterogeneous protocols. The model supports the specification of several types ofconstraints, such as the number of required successful negotiations, the limit price for the itemsto be traded, and the temporal constraints imposed by all trading parties. In order to guidethe execution of the trading activities, we describe a novel planning and execution model forcomposite trading activities which is designed to maximize the expected utility of the user.