subject: What To Search For In Trading Software [print this page] What To Search For In Trading Software What To Search For In Trading Software
What You Should Look For In Trading Software You've put some thought about getting into the trading business; you've already done it sort of casually with a few thousand; and now you're thinking about taking the next logical step. You've just inquired with your accountant to review the general capital gains things to keep in mind about professional trading, and those sorts of volumes, and you're all cleared there, now all you have got to do is really evaluate and look into, seriously, these trading> packages. When reviewing systems like this, you're looking for a key handful of benchmark standards. Firstly, you'll want to identify if the software is something that's stand alone or hosted. If it's stand alone there are particular advantages and disadvantages. It used to be that you usually received all the best features and systems specs on stand alone systems because stand alone products really gave you the better performance. You would have had a really hard time finding a single hosted stock> system back in the day, well, just a few years ago. Today nonetheless, increasingly more companies are offering hosted programs and platforms. What's absolutely given about these systems though is that you have the ability to back test. Back testing simply means that you can create a trading program, after which you test those programmed concepts, against 10 or so years of back information. However that's the catch, as a lot of systems are in fact limited in terms of the volume of back data they are actually able to process, so you should inquire about that as soon as you can. You'll also want to see how it performs and take it out for a test, how it actually performs at around 6:30 AM PST, 9:30 AM EST after the bell has rung. When you test the software, you can just click around, you don't actually have to ask about exiting out after you've deposited some test cash. Most products allow you to beta test or even just trial their system out. And then most importantly you'll want to figure out what the per trade fees are like, and you'll want to factor that into your business plan, make certain that the system abides with your metrics for profiting on a daily, weekly basis. Once again, you're system has to tune well into the goals you are trying to accomplish. The area of technical analysis software really is a personal one, and it really needs to conform to you and your trading style. If it doesn't, you're bound to start making a few bad trades and slip up; the relationship with the system should be fluid.
