Setting up for Day Trading US stocks?

[LondonScalper]

I've been using MS EOD for several years now and I'm looking to start scalping the US stocks during the day. I have custom explorations and indicators which I think will work well and want to try them out.

I'm wanting to know how best to set this up, I'll probably subscribe to MS pro initially rather than buy outright but who do you guys use for live data? Also which brokers do you use and can they take buy / sell orders from within the MS application or do I have to use their own platform?

thanks,
LS.

 

[Trader333]

People use different data sources but I have always found that IQFeed to be the most cost effective and reliable. Others us eSignal but I have never got on with it. I am not familiar with Metastock but I would be surprised if it did not allow order placement directly to a broker. For scalping you are going to need a DMA broker and the two favoured are Interactivebrokers and Tradestation. The advantage of Tradestation is that if you use them as a broker then they throw in the trading platform as well as long as you do a number of trades per month.


Paul

 

[LondonScalper]

Thanks for the info Paul, since my original post I've made a few phone calls and found out that Metastock doesn't currently support trade execution from within the application itself. It will however 'link' in with an IB account in that it will use the same data feed - esignal. The people at Thompson Reuters tell me that it is something they want to add to Metastock but they want to make sure they offer the best options to their customers, ie. the customer has a choice of several brokers as opposed to the Tradestation offering where you have to use them as brokers also.

I was initially reluctant to move from Metastock as I have several years of experience with their language and tools but I now think I'm going to investigate Tradestation and assess how much work would be involved in making the transition.

Also, on the broker front, I'll be moving away from IG to day trade the US stocks but is there a viable in between such as a CFD account instead of a full DMA broker?

thanks,
LS.

 

[LondonScalper]

Scrap that last question, just learnt that CFD's are for UK stocks only.

 

[Kamikazi_Trader]

Scrap that last question, just learnt that CFD's are for UK stocks only.

Not so, CFDs are for US Stocks too, certainly via Ample Interactive Investor, but their platform is very basic.