T2W Trading Community

The Right Tools for the Job: a guide to the hardware needed to trade from home

As someone who’s already considering trading, you’ll already have a PC and be connected to the internet – you wouldn’t be reading this otherwise – but you might be asking yourself just what sort of hardware and software does a trader need to give them an edge in today’s high-tech marketplace.

In the last few years, the relentless march of technology has made trading from home a viable proposition for many people. With a fast connection, modern PC and a Direct Access Broker, we as self-employed traders are able to access the same tools and systems that not so long ago were strictly for the professional.

There are many different ways to trade the markets. Some, like Day Trading, can require near constant screen watching of real-time charts on a range of timescales. For this kind of trading, you’re going to require modern hardware with decent graphics capabilities.

For End of Day (EOD) trading, the hardware requirements are not going to be as rigorous. You don’t need an all-singing, all-dancing PC – something with reasonably good graphics capability and a good-sized hard disk is probably going to be sufficient for your needs.

Systems Trading is going to take you down a similar line of hardware to the Day Trader. The machine could potentially use a lot of resources if it is scanning for particular stocks, or monitoring prices in order to automate a trade for you.

Certain brokers will also send alerts or data to mobile devices, such as cell phones or a Palm, in order for you to monitor your favourite stocks or markets.

This is not meant to be a technical article – I’ve covered some PC basics here, but everything is described in layman’s terms, so even the most PC-illiterate should be able to understand the concepts clearly.