why everyone always thinks he needs to have the top notch hardware for being able to trade. It all depends on what your style is like. You using tons of charts? then i'd go for more ram. I'm using 512mb, but 256 would be sufficient as well with winxp. Trading software generally doesn't waste too much of CPU power so it doesn't need to be a >1GHz processor. And how cares about disk space? you can be fine even with 3GB. T-1 what for? are traders fulltime movie leechers or what? ( ok some are =)) It's not the bandwith that is decisive.. furthermore it's the ping time. And with fastpath enabled DSL lines you can have faster pings than with T-1. conclusio: you don't always need the state of the art setup to trade successful although it's beyond any doubt nice to have bot no "must". Get what you can afford and you're fine
Interactive Brokers recently rebated me $1K for a problem they had early August. They did that for 460 members - that's 460G's. IB is everyday becoming a Pro Shop in disguise... nitro
Both of you are correct - there is some trading that can only be done on a T1, and sometimes you need a PTP T1 - I am aware of this kind of trading and milliseconds count. However, to say that one cannot trade UNLESS they have a T1 is grossly mistaken. I know several traders that traded in the pit of the MERC now trading from home on high quality DSL. I know several professional Daytraders that trade from home on quality DSL. For God's sake, I have traded from home on a dialup account. nitro
Hmmm - I have with 1GB of memory and dual Xeons that are at 100% the entire time the markets are open... nitro
This is one of the more senseless comments I've seen on this site. Reputable remote firms take very good care of their remote traders. Losing even one remote trader can cost a firm $15-$50,000 a year--or more.
I couldn't disagree more. I know dozens of remote traders and, in general, they lose their connection maybe once every 4-6 weeks, and then only for a few minutes--hour tops. Most have redundant ISP's so it's not even an issue.
Neither! You not only have huge traders from home, you also have small and midsized fund traders from remote locations clearing through their desired brokerage's offices. These funds (hedge, mutual, pension and money management) come to these firms with huge trading numbers and extract almost "at cost" commission/fee structured deals. You can be sure that they have multiple comm and backup comm systems. Comm speeds, yes they matter significantly. However, the other MOST significant detail are the software footprint and processing issues. Within that category are the compliation dates of the software, namely being able to take advantage of the latest Pentium instruction set extentions, and the latest processor features. Also, within that discussion are the memory usage and paging design of the software flow. Hence, its the atcual bolts and nuts of the software that handles processing that mouse click into profits, not just the connection speeds.