Hello, Elitetrader. I've lurked these forums on and off for a while, decided to finally register and begin posting. The run-down is, I'm a college student who's trading out of his dorm room, specializing in junior miners and even-driven investing for the most part. Thus far, I've been using the basic Fidelity brokerage service and Google finance. The constraints of these two services are becoming more and more frustrating as I trade more often. Google is buggy in general, and Fidelity is complete junk for intraday trading, particularly in penny stocks. Not to mention, the commission fees are starting to rack up. I don't trust Google searches when it comes to finding out about good online brokers and trading software. I'd prefer to get recommendations from people more experienced than myself, firsthand, if possible. Thus far, I've only been on the long side of low to super-low volume stocks, often under <1 million per day. I would like to get involved in stock shorting and options trading, with the ability to get involved in futures once I become more experienced. What would you guys recommend, for both an online broker for an active trader, and what would you recommend for trading software?
I've used quite a few of the popular charting programs. My current thinking is that Sierracharts is fine for what I do, not strong in backtesting but great for charting and order entry with Interactive Brokers. They interface with a few other brokerages, who knows which is best for what you are doing...
second vote for Sierra Chart. Good value for the money and very customizable for just about anything you want to do. Combine SC with a free data feed from a broker and you've got a nice setup for very little overhead.
Sierra Charts it is, then. The basic Fidelity service is complete junk for intraday trading, and even if you trade a given security once per every two or three days it can still be iffy, even on higher volume stocks.
I can recommend Velocity Futures or Open E Cry for trading futures with Sierra Chart. I have used both trading intraday and overnight and both feeds are reliable and do not require fees or minimum commissions for data. If you are more a stock trader then Interactive Brokers would be a good choice but requires a higher opening balance but has access to a lot more products.