TGpop, You have a lot to learn. A lot. Don't even think about trading with real money until you can answer these basic questions. Rather than go into great detail, I'll give you my very brief suggestion. Open up an account with ThinkOrSwim. They have the best brokerage charting software I have ever seen. To the best of my knowledge it is available for free to an unfunded account. I'm not sure how long that lasts though. As a broker, I can't stand them, but for charting software, they can't be beat. Keep in mind that I don't use them for charting or for trading, but for where you are in your journey it is the best.
i work at a prop firm and do very well actually . It's just i'm used to having everything payed for in the desk fee every month that i don't really understand it. I'm leaving the prop firm soon to start trading at home and was looking for some cheap software to start off with.
TGpop, My bad, but goodness you did an excellent job of fooling me. I do have a difference of opinion on the cheapest way to start mindset, especially if you have professional experience. I can't imagine that you'll be happy. Personally, after experimenting with 300 - 600 USD a month real-time quotes and software monthly fees, I've found my sweet spot to be no more than 150 USD a month with IQFeed and maybe 0 to 90 bucks a month for whatever particular trading software I would like to test out for a given 30 - 90 day period. Out of the many trading software packages that I have purchased full licenses for, I use NinjaTrader and Amibroker the most. Both of those have lifetime type licenses. Other than the ToS broker/trading software I already mentioned, I would add Amibroker + IB as your cheapest solution. It appears that you are concerned about cost, so Amibroker may not fit the bill. But, back to my original confusion, if you can't afford Amibroker + IB, then there is more going on here and I'm really confused. Regards, John
the #3 package for $26 will work with ES if you have an account with interactive brokers. the data feed is a bit sketchy though. some mornings it used to take over an hour to get connected to the data feed. that would happen several times a month. you get what you pay for. if you need a cheap good quality feed look into sierra charts real time data service. cost me $65 month including exchange fees plus another $26 for #3 package. $91 a month total.
This is a very a very solid middle of the road option. I use SC and there real time data is reliable. Although I'm sure CQG and other packages have advantages SC is good value and gives you lots of capacity. Certainly more than the limited amount I require. Post your needs on their noard and ask them to suggest the most economical way to go using there RT data service. It is real tick data rather than snapshot which is what so0me brokers throw at you. If you are going to look at a chart for a few pennies more it pays for it to be based on reality not near reality.
Get a demo account with OEC and use that for data maybe. Probably won't be as accurate as live account data but will give you a feel for SC.
go with sierra and dtn, pretty good pairing. I use sierra dtn, and metastock and quotecenter. I like using meta because Im an oldtimer dont want the hastle of changing it. But i like sierra because its so excel easy to use and easy to program stuff in. But yeah serra/dtn, all in shouldnt cost you more then 100-200 a month including exchange fees.