Sure x-trader is great once that level is achieved you need to go for the best of the best.. but... what about seasoned retail traders? - what do most people prefer?
don't know about "most people", but I cannot think of anything as flexible at Interactive Brokers: TWS, commissions, and stocks/futures/options and foreign markets "all in one". Don't underestimate commissions. It's critical if you trade just a little bit. For stocks I find 0.35 (to start with) +- fees to be excellent.
Lightspeed will offr the best commissions of any broker if you're looking for value. Xtrader is excellent. I also recommend bloomberg. Ninjatrader brings full C# development that you can port from mat lab, excel, etc to a multi broker platform. I also like the discretionary side - the charts are the most intuitive, imo. Just read the NT reviews - very positive.
Okay. For all in one we have 1 Interactive Brokers, TWS. For Futures. 2 x-trader votes, and 1 ninja trader vote.. Anyone else want to chime in?
Ninjatrader will do stocks I don't really know why people recommend IB, tws is not superb. There are also allot of complaints about there services. IMO
Yeah so this is it like 4 guys posted out of this whole site? No one here even trades for a living do they?
Investor r/t for charts, CTS T4 for execution, charting is ok too. Ninja is ok used it for a while looks pretty, but kinda laggy for me and not as powerful as IRT. Have yet to try X-trader. EDIT.. sorry didnt really read, above is choice for Futures^^. I just use IB for stocks/options. Ninja and IRT for charts.