Building trading agents: Challenges and strategies

With the advent of the Internet, trading in electronic market places has become common practice for an increasing number of businesses and individuals. One of the most efficient ways of negotiating for goods and services is via auctions. Although implementing an agent to take part in an auction for a single good is relatively simple, developing an agent to participate in simultaneous auctions offering complementary and substitutable goods is a complex task. In this paper we discuss the challenges of the Trading Agent Competition which features a complex benchmark e-market problem and we present the strategies of two agents that participated successfully in the competition, one of them being placed among the eight finalists.