I'm thinking about setting up a home office where I would be trading eurodollar futures. I get Comcast internet in my city and according to their website, the fastest internet connection allows for 16MB downloads. This would be for a relatively fast trading style and was hoping to get some feedback on my potential use of Comcast and if it should work well enough. Look forward to hearing your feedback.
Can you elaborate on that? I'm assuming you are referring to bandwidth, which I'm not too familiar with. how does it work? Why is Fios so much better than cable? Comcast will give 20/2 mbps, eventhough they say it's 16mbps.
Thanks for the reply. I guess the next obvious question is what can be done about latency? Are there any other options if you want to trade from home? Would getting a T1 line solve the problem?
Someone I know traded Eurodollar futures from home and he was frustrated. It depends on what method you are using... if you are trying to scalp spreads, it is hard because, from what he said, a lot of that stuff was going black box, and there is no way in hell you are going to click faster than a computer co-loc'd at the exchange. You will have a hard time beating traders located in Chicago if setups are only available for a split second and it is a widely known setup. From a technical standpoint, bandwidth isn't really the bottleneck as a previous poster said... it is latency, i.e. the amount of time it takes your electrons to get to Chicago. Comcast isn't carrying your electrons all the way to Chicago, they get sent over other backbone networks too, thus the unpredictable nature, although most latency issues occur locally since backbones have massive bandwidth and are very redundant. A T1 helps because it acts as a point to point connection, which should reduce latency. If you are really serious, I would buck up for a T1 or point to point fiber... however, you still won't beat the black box at the exchange, or maybe even the Chicago trader hovering over the execute button, looking for the same setup you are. My 2 cents, feel free to point out any mistakes