excupitory
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Greetings all,
My name is Joshua, and yes, I have a made up word for my user ID: excupitory. Not so surprisingly there is never competition for it when you sign up for an account somewhere.
I have no actual trading experience, but have spent about 800+ hours over the last 8 months researching, reading, and papertrading (couldn't come up with a 3rd "r" word) and think I am ready to dive in with real money. Surprisingly, the biggest hurdle to my taking the plunge has been finding a broker and software. I would like to start by trading forex and have studied it nearly exclusively over the last 4-5 months. IB seems to be a great broker, but I really do not like their software. Dukascopy looks great (other than a really weird name), but I'd have to trade 100k or more lots, which is more than I'd like to start with. MT4 has grown on me some and I thought about using it with MBTrading's ECN offering, but I thought I'd check into not-too-expensive software and perhaps spend a bit to make a bit more and support my "newbie analysis." ProRealTime (PRT) looks great, and I really liked the ease of order entry and order change, the auto trend lines, and overall clean interface. And then I was even more impressed with Multicharts (MC).
To my shear amazement, I found out from MC and PRT that you can't manually trade in either package from the chart. I thought they misunderstood my question or that they were kidding, but no, they say it can't be done. We can fly remote controlled cars to Mars and scoop dirt, but we can't buy and sell the Euro-Dollar from a 3rd party chart! (OK, not a 1-to-1 but surprising nevertheless.) This problem prompted my introduction to the masses of t2w, from whom I have anonymously gleaned so much insight and info over these many months, and my first direct questions: can this really be right? Are manual traders using MC, MCFX, or PRT really relegated to analyzing in one software and entering trades in another? Or perhaps these software reps are unaware of/choose not to promote ways around their limitations.
It may help if I share what I am ultimately looking for (other than love, food, and shelter): I would like an ECN broker with whom I can trade forex while using a nicer software package that will generate signals on the chart. (Remember I am a newbie, granted with lots and lots of time studying this under my belt but with exponentially more to learn, and would like some help from a software package without too much tinkering.) I'd really like low commissions and software that doesn't cost too much, say $1500 or less up front (as is MC) or less than $100/month (as are MCFX and PRT.) Maybe its not doable, but this is my goal, and your mission should you choose to accept it.
The posts on this site have revealed that the more I know, the greater the supply out there to know, and I sincerely welcome your thoughts, input, critiques, prayers, etc.
My name is Joshua, and yes, I have a made up word for my user ID: excupitory. Not so surprisingly there is never competition for it when you sign up for an account somewhere.
I have no actual trading experience, but have spent about 800+ hours over the last 8 months researching, reading, and papertrading (couldn't come up with a 3rd "r" word) and think I am ready to dive in with real money. Surprisingly, the biggest hurdle to my taking the plunge has been finding a broker and software. I would like to start by trading forex and have studied it nearly exclusively over the last 4-5 months. IB seems to be a great broker, but I really do not like their software. Dukascopy looks great (other than a really weird name), but I'd have to trade 100k or more lots, which is more than I'd like to start with. MT4 has grown on me some and I thought about using it with MBTrading's ECN offering, but I thought I'd check into not-too-expensive software and perhaps spend a bit to make a bit more and support my "newbie analysis." ProRealTime (PRT) looks great, and I really liked the ease of order entry and order change, the auto trend lines, and overall clean interface. And then I was even more impressed with Multicharts (MC).
To my shear amazement, I found out from MC and PRT that you can't manually trade in either package from the chart. I thought they misunderstood my question or that they were kidding, but no, they say it can't be done. We can fly remote controlled cars to Mars and scoop dirt, but we can't buy and sell the Euro-Dollar from a 3rd party chart! (OK, not a 1-to-1 but surprising nevertheless.) This problem prompted my introduction to the masses of t2w, from whom I have anonymously gleaned so much insight and info over these many months, and my first direct questions: can this really be right? Are manual traders using MC, MCFX, or PRT really relegated to analyzing in one software and entering trades in another? Or perhaps these software reps are unaware of/choose not to promote ways around their limitations.
It may help if I share what I am ultimately looking for (other than love, food, and shelter): I would like an ECN broker with whom I can trade forex while using a nicer software package that will generate signals on the chart. (Remember I am a newbie, granted with lots and lots of time studying this under my belt but with exponentially more to learn, and would like some help from a software package without too much tinkering.) I'd really like low commissions and software that doesn't cost too much, say $1500 or less up front (as is MC) or less than $100/month (as are MCFX and PRT.) Maybe its not doable, but this is my goal, and your mission should you choose to accept it.
The posts on this site have revealed that the more I know, the greater the supply out there to know, and I sincerely welcome your thoughts, input, critiques, prayers, etc.
