Trading Computers Guide: How Much RAM do you need in your Trading Computer?

Trading Computers Guide: How Much RAM do you need in your Trading Computer

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Hello, my name is Eddie Z, I've been trading the financial markets full time for over 22 years. As a hobby, I have been taking computers apart and putting them back together since before Microsoft and Apple were public companies. During that time, I have come to truly understand computer technology from a traders point of view. As a full time financial market participant myself, and with my technology background, I can offer a unique perspective into what traders really need in terms of trading computer technology.

People ask me nearly every day: How much memory or R.A.M. do traders need for Trading Computers? It really is an excellent question. What is RAM? RAM is Random Access Memory. When you first turn on your computer, your RAM is totally the empty. The first thing the computer does is pull the Operating System, like Windows 7, Linux or XP , from your hard drive and load it up into the RAM where its then executed and your computer starts up. Whenever you open a program, your computer extracts the program's instructions from the hard drive and executes them in the RAM. RAM is where all your programs live when they are in use. When they are not in use they are stored on the hard drive.

So how much RAM do you need? You need enough RAM to be able to run all of your trading programs and operating system simultaneously. Windows 7 by itself uses 1 to 1.5 GB of RAM and then you tack on your trading programs, internet browsers, instant messengers, virus protection, and all the other stuff that runs in the background, you can get up to over 4 GB very quickly. If you are running more programs than the RAM's capacity, your computer will start using your hard drive to store information. This will truly slow things down. Several years ago when broadband was first introduced, most of our computers did not have enough RAM to suddenly handle the large amounts of data we were viewing online and it took a long time for pages to load. Adding RAM at that time made an tremendous difference. A safe amount of RAM for beginner and intermediate traders these days is 6 GB. Professionals and more sophisticated traders will want to make sure you never run out of RAM, and this means using at least 12 GB. When it comes to RAM, better to be safe than sorry.

If you are running windows 7 with 1 browser, and 1 trading platforms then 6 GB will work fine. If you are running 8 monitors with some kind of automated trading strategies that use more than 10 custom indicators it would probably be best to go with 12 GB of RAM. So the answer on RAM is a minimum of 6 GB and at least 12 GB for more advanced users.

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