So I use a macbook air, and I love it, and I love the OSX Lion operating system and really do not want to change back to Windows. So I am just wondering how I should go about getting broker software to work on my system…
I am committed to becoming a full-time professional trader, and I really don’t want to be limited in how to approach the fx market. I think ultimately programming an EA would be how I would go about it - so here comes the question;
[B]Can a Macbook Air handle all the relevant software using windows emulation? Or will I experience too many road blocks in terms of slow operating speed, crashes etc, when using what is not the most powerful machine on the market.[/B]
Also… I found a broker offering -1.7 pip spread on EUR/USD!!! What the??? Is that possible or is this some hilarious mistake on their part…
No idea on the tech question…as far as negative spreads… they can and do occur… but very few have access to them, and they are very short lived at best.
Occassionally, a large entity trading directly on the interbank market (think largest banks with direct access to each other)
will post a negative spread in order to increase the speed that they “roll over their inventory”. This is most frequent in the eur/usd, and occassionally the usd/jpy because of competition from other banks in these “most liquid” pairs creates a more competitive marketplace.
However, I am highly skeptical of this broker extending this infrequently occuring advantage to anyone other than their highest priority clients (probably with some pretty large trading accounts, and/or very frequent transactions).
That astricks up by the “LIVE FX QUOTES” makes me even more skeptical that you’ll ever actually get to benefit from a negative spread.
I am using an iMac 27" with Lion as well. I use Parallels 7 to run MT4 on Windows 7 SP1. With mission control and the magic mouse it works flawlessly and no performance degradation whatsoever. I can run Windows natively in bootcamp if I want to as well or I can run it in coherence mode and it seems like I am running MT4 on a Mac natively! Absolutely love it.
The Mac should’t affect your ability to trade or code EAs whatsoever.
I know of a friend who uses his Mac air to trade fx using Parallels and MT4 and it is a 2 yr old Mac. Only thing I would advise is not to have too many pairs open in MT4 it can slow the performance a bit during startup but otherwise no issue at all.
Emulation software / virtual machines are probably the best and most convenient ways of running Windows in an OSX environment. You could always do bootcamp also which is just like dual-booting but it’s not as convenient, though you may see some speed/memory gains.
Parallels or VMWare are excellent. If you’re looking for free software you can try VirtualBox but I am not entirely sure they’ve got an installer for OSX. If they do, its a wonderful piece of software.
Thanks guys. I got windows 7 happening through boot camp. Installed Parallels 7 as well and have been running my brokers software for a day now. Moving things around can be a little choppy, and I think this is primarily due to the 27inch thunderbolt display I have hooked up… but its all very solid, and gives me all the flexibility I was looking for. All from a macbook air! I love where technology is going
sounds like you’ve got a pretty nice setup going there
Second screens are the best haha. I’ve got window-installers this week so going from 3 monitors down to one laptop screen is a huge adjustment I don’t like.
