For someone just starting out trading at home, how important is it to have more than 1 monitor from the outset? Does it make sense to start with only 1 and then add later? Also, should I even consider anything less than 19"?
Even for non-trading activities, I find it valuable to have more than one monitor. For example, you go to a website and get upgrade instructions... you can move the instruction page to the 2nd monitor while you execute things from the primary. As for trading, I'd imagine most on ET use 2 or more monitors by now... I have 4 monitors on my primary trading rig, and I think 4 is quite common here... some guys have 6 or 8. After you've used 19's, it's annoying to go back to smaller. 17's in LCDs at higher resolution are not bad, though... and quite a bit less costly than 19's. Once you decide what you want for a display platform, let the board know and they'll offer suggestions. You can't just throw video cards together and expect them to work. A bad video driver conflict could force you to reinstall your OS.
You can use dual screens on a PC as a minimum. I prefer two PC's with dual screens each. My PC's are netted together. I can move anything to any spot on each of the pairs. You need a cable or equivalent bandwidth connection.
You can start out with 2 monitors, but for now, have ONE monitor devoted to TRADING ONLY. Focus on one thing at a time, and as you master that one instrument/area whatever, then expand. The second monitor could be used for things such as web browsing, email, whatever, but you want to limit your distractions. For the longest, I traded with only one monitor, focusing on my trading only. But I do have to admit, it is cool when your friends come over and see the dual setup.. good luck, and just learn one thing, learn it *well* and expand from there.
I am an older person with EE experience in ORD 6 equipment (Nike I and AJAX) and the IBM conversion from vacuum tubes (600 and 700 series) to transitors. LOL We had a mean time to failure orientation. PC redundancy is my cure for having data and communication capability at all times. I actually have other PC's tied to phone lines. I post pics of my set up a while back on ET. You can see six screens in the pics where one is a TV. The arc they are in (68cm) has the four screens in the middle. I am just an amateur and I limit my self to holds of up to 100K shares in any given equity stream (multiple accounts). I try to net 10% per 6 to 8 day cycle. I panic if I do not have data available one way or another. I trade by phone on equities so I can use broker for backup. Equities are a consideration vis a vis losing feed. To exit a 100K share position I have to trade into the peak, across it , and maybe go down the other side in a portion of a day. The two constraints are to not affect the market regarding block size nor to trade more than 10% of the cummulative trading for the day. For a 30 dollar stock it takes 30 trades to exit in a market that does 1 milliion or so shares a day. The slippage, for me, has approached 200k on a 17 point net by not pacing the cummulative volume. Losing data feed is an issue under these circumstances. Regarding futures, I am now electronic (gave up phone on DJXX when eminis were invented.) With this set up I have had losses during brief periods of disconnect (for minutes to a portion of an hour) that are in the four digit range at a frequency of that is quarterly at best. This is a drag for me. I feel uncomfortable when my data (from multi sources) gets out of synch because of overloading at sources or on down the feed line. I have three phone lines (see pics) to get out of trouble if need be. I guess being born in the depression, dealing with military reliability needs, and dealing with large mainframes has biased me to one extreme. The financial aspect is a consideration too; I am very risk adverse and some people feel that I am greedy and I focus too much on being very efficient in taking capital out of the market.
I'm like you about backups and redundancy. Why don't you trade the ES? I know in the ES you can usually trade 100 lot with zero slippage (currently, that would be about $5.5Million)
Completely depends on what YOUR specific visibility needs are. Nobody else can answer that for you. If you can see/access everything you need on one monitor - then of course you don't need a second one. That will definitely be the case for a lot of new traders. Extra monitors, dozens of windows, or cool hardware will NOT (repeat NOT) make you profitable. Better to concentrate on a comparatively small set of things at one time and develop trading skill and become profitable. You can always get a hyper-powered, six headed rig (ala the movie Swordfish) when you're putting real money in your pocket. As far as display real estate goes - be sure to consider your various options and your specific usage, physical, and ergonomic needs. Example - two 1024x768 displays have only about 20% more space than a single 1280x1024 display or two 1280x1024 displays have only about 35% more space than one 1600x1200 display.
I've heard about the specific emini you have mentioned (ES). I participate there presently. I readily see that I could run 50 turns every five minutes at peak times using your upper limit. It drops down to lesser amounts during the rest of the RTH. I rarely see the Bbid/Aask trading blocks rolling along at the level you mention. I am scaling anyway with market orders most of the day. I set daily goals (per contract) as Ari Keiv (See video posted in ET) suggests to his psychiatric patients who trade. I do it with respect to the contemporary range of H/L.
Try the Pro-Trader Platform from REFCO for ES and ZB. Rock solid, and very stable even in fast markets and FOMC announcements.