For a newbie with 10k, and not being able to daytrade stocks because of new rules, what platform, news feed, broker, data feeds, charts, books, etc. are mandatory for successful trading of e-mini or swingtrading stocks. Just need some opinions to figure monthly costs of such feeds and commissions. What and who do you suggest? How would you spend your money to begin under these circumstances trading? Thanks for your help and insight!
For day trading your costs will run $80-100/month for real-time quotes. Currently you get emini quotes free and don't have to pay the additional CME real-time quote exchange fee of $60/month. That will change in a few months. For startup costs, the usual applies: charting software, trading enviornment, etc. QCharts is free when you sign up with quote.com, but it only has minimal charting/indicator abilities. For some traders that is enough. Depending on your trading style, you may want to have a backup quote feed, workstation, etc. Some day traders have two DSL lines, others are fine with modem dial-up as a backup. If you always have a stoploss on your open positions (rather than using mental stops), then you lose your connection you're not as much at risk. If you're only looking at end-of-day trading then your costs will be a lot less as EOD data is freely available and EOD charting software is usually cheaper. For brokers, see the broker section for pros/cons of different brokers. Regarding news feeds/books, if you're still wondering if you need news feeds or which books to read, I would recommend a lot more reading before jumping in.