T2W Trading Community

The Basics

On the hardware front, as a minimum, you'll need a fairly fast PC (more on what “a fairly fast PC” is shortly), one monitor (preferably 17 inch), and a good inkjet printer if you want to print charts. There are some other options you might consider – a backup power supply (UPS), for example – but they aren't essential to get you started.

On the software side, you'll need a trading platform to enable you to place trades with your broker, a data feed and a good charting package for analysis. Your broker will supply you with the trading platform, but may not always give you the rest.

Hardware – A Fast PC

Before I talk about what a fast PC is, we need to consider what you class as a PC.

You might intend to trade off a desktop or laptop PC operating on Microsoft's ‘Windows', or it could be that your current PC is an Apple Mac or iBook. At the other end of the scale, there's a dedicated Workstation, designed solely with trading in mind. If you're reading this, chances are you fall into one of the first two categories.

• Windows PC

Most trading software and applications are written for a Windows environment. If you're a Windows PC user, you're spoilt for choice. Every door is open to you. No matter which broker you choose, or which charting software you want, you can have it in Windows - no problem!

• Apple Mac

In the ever-present face of viruses and spyware, given that two of the Apple Mac's strengths over a Windows PC are stability and security, it's odd that there aren't more trading applications designed for it. There are very few brokers or charting packages that operate on Mac OS although they do exist and include a few big names such as Interactive Brokers).

Given the above, its worth having a long, hard think about your hardware before you make your next purchase.

The Need for Speed - Processors

The most common way of determining the speed of a system is by the speed of the Central Processor Unit (CPU). Processors typically have a major leap forward in performance every two years, so a PC that was bought three or four years ago is now seriously outclassed in the performance stakes, when compared to modern equipment.

A quick look at a selection of both the old and current crop of processors gives us a whole range of names and potentially confusing terminology. In the table below, column 1 is the name of the processor, column 2 is the speed at which it operates and column 3 is the speed at which the data can travel around the PC on the Bus.

Pentium II	233-450 MHz	100MHz Bus Speed
Pentium III	450 Mhz-1Ghz	133Mhz Bus Speed
Pentium 4	1.4-3.6 GHz (currently)	800 MHz Bus Speed
AMD Duron	700-800 MHz	200 MHz Bus Speed
AMD Athlon K7	850 Mhz-1.2Ghz	200 or 266 MHz Bus Speed
AMD Athlon XP	1.67 GHz	266 MHz Bus Speed
AMD Athlon 64	800 MHz – 2.6 GHz (curr.)	1.6 GHz Bus Speed
PowerPC G3	233-333 MHz	100 MHz Bus Speed
PowerPC G4	400-800 MHz	100 MHz Bus Speed
PowerPC G5	1.6 - 2.5 GHz	900 MHz-1.25 GHz Bus Speed

Obviously there are other CPUs on the market than in the table above, but this is shown as an example guide, not an exhaustive list.

RAM

Another major factor as to how quickly your PC can work is how much RAM – Randomly Accessed Memory - it has. Try and think of your PC's RAM as a big desktop, and the hard drive as a filing cabinet. If the PC has a lot of desktop space (RAM), it can get all the files out and put them on the desktop, where it can read them quickly. If, however, it has to get up and open the filing cabinet, then rummage through it every time it wants some instructions it's going to take it longer to do. Hence, you should buy as much as you can afford – at least 256Mb of it, for a basic setup.

Hard Drive

Quite simply, treat it like RAM. Buy as much as you can afford. Again, not so long ago, 20GB seemed like a lot of hard drive space – and it is. But when many modern applications can be hundreds of megabytes in size, and you're also downloading files, music, streaming video etc – you'll soon find that you're eating into drive space. Once a drive is over 50% full, they tend to start to slow down, and need more regular defragmentation and maintenance.

Other Components

Obviously, there are many other components that make up your PC, but this article is not about technicals: it's about how suitable a PC can be for trading, so that's what I'll concentrate on here.