Hi everyone,
There doesn’t seem to be a section of the forum for discussion on hardware? Maybe the reason for that is that it doesn’t really matter.
It seems that there is whole host of options available, from simple laptop or PC with a single screen, to 8 even 10 screen trading station set ups.
If money were no object what would you go for??
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject.
GG
Interesting question but I am sure most of the people on this forum here would be using a laptop or home PC.
I was always fascinated by those professional traders with 4 screens and different charts and graphs and news updates on each one.
I recall one of the Market Wizards from Jack Schwager’s book had screens all over his house, even in his bathroom just so he wouldn’t miss any trades!
Maybe if I ever make it to a full time trader I’d get a PC with 2 screens just for the heck of it 
I have seven monitors, 2 lap tops, 1 desktop.
2 screens minimum.
I use 2 MacBook pro’s both dedicated trading computers, with an extra screen each. One stays on 24/5 , other only during trades. Both hooked to dsl and cable.
1 Mac air for streaming news, mail, analysis and searches.
A secondary Mac air back up tethered to an iPhone and another iPhone with the mobile app running.
That’s in my trading room.
One more laptop in the living room.
My risk management.
life’s too short for boring cars and cheap wine.
For those that are using a Mac, do you use Fusion or Parallels to run Windoze software, or are you using a purely browser based broker package?
I have an iMac running fusion at the moment, and my virtual XP machine keeps getting disconnected from the Internet, on average I guess once per day.
I should really stump up the cash for Win 7, is it more stable?
Thanks
Andy
Running with 1 PC with 2 video cards and 2 monitors
actually i am looking at building a dedicated trading computer setup.anyone have any thoughts?
Buy an i3, i5 or i7 laptop. Then you can use the laptop screen and another external one. Makes 2 screens plus plenty of power for charts and EAs. Imo the best what you can have for a bargain price (just the laptop and a screen) for under $1k.
If you need just a computer for EA trading and no or very simple charts, buy the cheapest netbook for under $200.
I use a lot of charts but i take it that trading software, even say high end charting packages like ninjatrader, multicharts or trade station. Do not require that much computing power. I was looking for a desktop build really but maybe i was over speccing it to be honest. i was going i5/i7 with 12 gb ram and 2 video cards. that build would be under 1k as well. i am currently running a laptop with additional monitor as is. but i have noticed some lag at very peak times in the market. especially opens looking at prints and my DOM. that’s the only reason why i was considering upgrading. I just figured it was a computer thing cause this laptop is about 2 years old now. running 4gb ram and a intel core 2 duo.
MeiHua, I don’t think it’s the computing power. Every dual core should do the job easily. What about your connection? Some complicated EAs or indicators could consume plenty of power, tho. Particular if it is based on a recursive process. Not a standard indi like rsi or ma, tho. Well, I’d assume the culprit lies on the connection side. What about the broker feed? Regarding desktop or laptop I’d always opt for a laptop. Reasons:
yeah i have cable internet as of right now speedtest.net says 9ms ping 12.60mbps down 5.47 mpbs up. that battery thing makes a lot of sense actually. i guess i gotta find the weak link in the chain.
Lenovo ThinkPad with an i7.
i7 2600 CPU desktop, 8GB RAM, 2TB hardrives, 4 21’ monitors.
New Build for ATS:
Server - 16TB total disk space
Desktop - 16GB RAM, i7 2600K, 3 video cards, and 6 monitors.
The reason is because I’m running more power-consuming programs and such. I’ll be going with a DMA broker with FIX protocol API. As well as using MATLAB and other platforms. If you’re trading manually or running basic EAs for MT4, a laptop will do.
If you trade manually, how many hours per week do you need to spend in front of your PC?
Do you guys really feel any difference when trading with different PCs or notebooks?
it all depends on how you trade. fast internet connections and powerful computers will help specially those who use EAs/do auto trading or those who crunch a lot of data. if not, you do not need anything fancy or expensive. ‘above average’ computers (dual core and up; those currently sold in stores) will be enough.
For my desktop I have a i5 quad core 2500 over-clocked with 16 gb ram 2 vid cards for 4 screens, 250gb SSD to run my platform and data stream off of. My Internet connection is a 100mb business class connection.
seems more than adequate. what data stream and platform/s do you run? do you trade frequently? did you OC it yourself?
I use MC as my platform with a zenfire and CQG. I trade very frequently. I did OC it myself. Its adequate to do most trading jobs, but for data mining, large monte carlo and genetic algo training its completely under powered.
I use a basic trading PC which I built myself, it’s nothing fancy with a AMD FX-4 4100 Black Edition 4 Core 3.6Ghz, 8GB RAM and a small graphics card for the use of two monitors. Total cost with two 23" monitors came to £650.00. Nothing extreme, but does the job for being powered up for around 16 hours a day.
i have an AMD-based desktop with 6 screens and an AMD-based 15" laptop. each is sufficient.
if money were no object, i’d put that infinite money into my trading account and not into the computer! computing power needed isn’t huge, neither is network bandwidth / speed. tick data comes at pretty well the same rate now as it did 10 years ago anyways… not like time is faster now than it was in the 1990s. the graphics are basic 2D anyhow, so just about any vid card will be fine.
but i DID spend $100 on a comfortable mouse and a large enough mousepad for the 6-screen cursor room…