Your equipment is an important
part of your "edge". To make consistently good trades you need to have an edge on
both technology and methodology.
If you are driving a car and you can't see out the side or back windows and your windshield is very small, you will not be a good driver. Sure
you can get there but you are at severe risk of crashing into something along the way, or getting lost.
The first equipment edge you need is to use more monitors. They don't heed to be the biggest and most expensive monitors but you should
be able to get 4-6 charts on each monitor. We recommend six to eight monitors for veteran traders. New traders can start with fewer monitors until
they are ready for professional level trading. Your computer should be able to handle at least six monitors, even if you are not using
six monitors right now. We will show you how to use all those
monitors in our lessons.
The second equipment edge you need is speed. When the markets are moving fast in the morning, or if its just a high volume day, you need a strong
computer to keep up. You don't need to spend a fortune, but you need to spend enough. The Falcon F-22 is less than $1,800 and is very powerful. the
F-22 is also very good for professional level traders and can easily support the recommended six
to eight monitors (it goes up to 12 monitors).
When we say "speed" we are referring to the speed of the processor and the processor family: a Pentium processor running at 3GHz is not as fast as
an i5 processor running at 3GHz. The Intel i-series processor are always preferred over any other processor, and the faster the better.
You don't need a lot of processor cores because your trading
software can't effectively use more than one or two cores.
Memory speed is also important; not just the GHz of the memory but the memory timings. The speed of memory is combination of its GHz speed and its
timings and is called "Latency". Latency is measured in nono-seconds (ns). The fewer the nano-seconds the better. Falcon trading computers
latency is in the 46-50ns range while Dell and HP are in the 65-120ns range. Buying the very best memory and adjusting the timings properly is how you
get the latency down so low.
If you went to the dentist and he was using cheap Wal-Mart
tools intended for household use you would probably not
expect to get the same quality of work as the dentist who
had the correct tools for the job. Trading has special
tools, too. We recommend a minimum six monitor trading setup
with the screens displaying the information you need as
shown above. These can be economically purchased at
TradingComputers.com. We do not recommend using one of
the cheap knock-off brands of trading computers or using an
inexpensive household/business computer. The household and
business computers are fine for routine tasks like word
processing or Web surfing but are too slow and incapable of
six monitors. |
