I never said that LS is more popular than IB or that another broker is more popular than IB, or that IB is more popular than other brokers. You’re putting words in my mouth and then debating yourself.
I traded on Lightspeed for the first decade of my career, and IB for my second decade, trading full-time. If you are daytrading US Stocks, Lightspeed is the best.
understood - so how is "best" defined and how did you measure it? Over 10 years that is. And do include units.
Fast execution. Back then, I was fully keyboard-based. The ability to scale in and out, of a position using mapped keyboard entries. Again, that may have changed, as Algos entered the picture. I no longer trade stocks. I trade futures, and I trade on the actual chart, with a mouse! Back then, we used to make fun of the "mouse" traders!!!
understood - so how is "fast" defined and how was it measured? In what units? If no actual data then no actual fast and then no actual best. Funny how words suffer from the weakness of words.
You truly got me there. It looks like an in-depth study is in order, which would frankly benefit a lot of ET members (me included).
Ergonomically, a mouse is incredibly inefficient compared to doing the same tasks via keyboard entry. A roll of the fingers on one hand might include 5 keystrokes if you include the thumb. A 5-step menu on a mouse takes 5 single-click entries on a drop-down menu, AND requires the hand to move in order to navigate the damn GUI. (Called "gooey" for a reason. ) This is where the hotkeys that ChipShotTrader come in: making a 1 or 2-second move with a mouse into a "blurp!" on a keyboard that lasts 0.50 seconds. IB's TWS helps out (us) retail nerds with tremendous per-contract order templates and some pretty solid hotkeys. That and the oh-so-marvelous BookTrader make one-touch trades pretty darn close to what you could do with a trading keyboard/add-on. And given IB's 2020 futures margin...... yeah -- there's now zero difference.
so how is "tremendous" measured and in what units? how is "pretty solid" measured and in what units? How is "oh-so-marvelous" measured and in what units?
when you find the platform that suites you, check out Bookmap software for supplementary tool to trade stocks.