Thought I'd start this thread out of curiosity, since I'm very much into NLP and psychology. I'm interested in learning what colors you use in your trading software, e.g. on your charts, your open positions dialogue etc. A few years back, I realized that having flashy boxes and red & green charts with black background seriously impaired my rational judgement. So I decided to make my trading screens as boring as possible; I'm using black & white candlestick charts, since these are the colors I am confronted with in almost all trading books. I rarely use colors, and if I do, then mainly calming or psychologically 'neutral' ones such as grey, blue, orange etc. But maybe some of you found good applications for colors on your screens; what do you use e.g. flashy windows or bright colors for? Do you have lots of red on your screens?
background just off-white (255:255:244 R:G:B) candles B&W - can't say it helps me trade any better though
for L2 I have all the different ecn's colour coded... nyb is yellow like a taxi in ney york... island (now inet) is blue brut - birght green arca (white) I always make the axe bright pink.. (for nyse stocks this is the top level nyse quote...) everything else is just white.... in my blotter long positions are blue and short positions are brown... same in my pending orders window... I think that's it... colours help recognize things quicker... In my early days I doubled my losing positions by accident too many times... (instead of dumping the position...) that's it... mnx
I tried to use the "minimal" approach like you did with just black/white but found that there wasnt enough information at "first glance"... right now I find the default green/red scheme good enough, but i dont have many flashing boxes... i use flashing boxes for alerts.
The Default Colors for QCharts <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1005714> - Spydertrader