Trading Platform / Charting Software Recommendations :)

[vchohan1]

Hi All,

So I've been searching for a charting package and trading platform in one. Things to consider;

- £1000 initial account balance
- I am a swing trader so will be trading 5 - 20 times a month (roughly)
- I will only be trading the US market in stock such as Netflix, Facebook, GoPro etc.
- I am trading from the UK.

I've had a look at several and I come across the issue that the charting package is not great i.e. IG Index or they want high account balances i.e. Interactive Brokers £10000 (which I will have at a later date).

Any thoughts or recommendations?

Thanks,

Vik

 

[f2calv]

IG Index offer PreRealTime charting for free *if* you place 4 or 5 times a month which should suffice for your needs at this early stage.

 

[vchohan1]

IG Index offer PreRealTime charting for free *if* you place 4 or 5 times a month which should suffice for your needs at this early stage.

I've checked that and it's only for CFDs apparently. I'll be buying the stocks without leverage. I think I've said that correctly but correct me if I'm wrong. Should I be looking at paid software?

 

[f2calv]

Trading £1000 without leverage, well for starters that's called investing not trading. Secondly £1000 will buy such tiny quantities of the aforementioned stocks as to be not worth even investing in the first instance.

Sorry to be negative here but you need to do some more research as you don't appear to have thought this through.

 

[vchohan1]

I disagree, but happy to listen to your suggestions. I'm starting small as a newbie should right? Even if it buys me 2 or 3 shares it's about getting some experience with real money in the market.

 

[vchohan1]

Plus I'm not here to discuss the difference between trading and investing I think most people know the difference. I'm not holding my stocks for longer than 2 weeks at a time really. I'm swing trading.

 

[f2calv]

£1000 of shares minus commissions from buying and selling imo is quite pointless, might as well paper trade until you have an account size worthy of the effort.

If you are willing to consider margin trading (I.e. spreadbetting/CFDs) then thats much more practical on £1000 starting pot.

Either way paper trade until you find the broker/chart package of your dreams and accounting for commissions see if it's practical.

 

[Solas0077]

My boss spent 1000 Pounds just for drinks last week celebrating our fourth consecutive up month in the fund this year.

 

[Signalcalc]

I don't think that £1k is too small, agreed that without leverage then you are going to make less than using leverage, but it will still teach lessons that demo trading won't teach.

FXCM have pretty good execution platforms, I don't use their charting, but they look good. I use ensign for my charting and signals generation.

 

[vchohan1]

Thanks for the comments, I do really appreciate and take on board what you said. It's actually very complementary of how I'm currently trading which is exactly that. I'm paper trading as if I only had £1000 with tradingview.com. I will have the £10k in 6 months but again I will be only using the £1000k to ensure I'm comfortable with real money first and that I'm profitable and then slowly scale up.

In regards to commissions, I've done some research and reckon I'll be looking at £5 - £10 per trade and possibly £20 a month for a charting package. I could be completely wrong here but like to think I'm in the right ball park. I'm accounting for this too and my focus is more on practising live trading with a small account. I'm happy to initially swallow my costs for commissions etc. I know a lot of people will probably disagree with my strategy on this, however, I think it's the best way to go.

So this is why I'm looking for a trading platform and charting software. I need to get comfortable with and be happy with the platform and charting software that I'm going to be using. Further comments and recommendations would be great.

 

[sminicooper]

It's important to use a charting package and platform that you like. I was in a similar situation to yours and concluded that I couldn't find an ideal combination. Having defined what I required from my ideal package I worked backwards from there and concluded that I would have to use 2 separate applications. I haven't actually found this to be a disadvantage. Regarding IG: their basic (free) charting package which comes with the spread betting platform is really excellent IMHO if you don't need super sophistication (and the headaches that go with it). The only reason I don't use it as my main charting is that I need to code-up scans and one or 2 other bits and pieces for which I use an ancient copy of Metastock which I really like. I haven't found it a disadvantage to have separate chart and trading platform – in fact with a multiple monitor setup it works really well.

In my experience it's too easy to get hooked up on the nuts and bolts of platforms and charting and forget that a good trader can make decent profits regardless.

 

[Trading Spaces]

www.tradingview.com www.freestockcharts.com www.stockcharts.com are free charts for us stocks. Then use any broker platform.

 

[malaguti]

Thanks for the comments, I do really appreciate and take on board what you said. It's actually very complementary of how I'm currently trading which is exactly that. I'm paper trading as if I only had £1000 with tradingview.com. I will have the £10k in 6 months but again I will be only using the £1000k to ensure I'm comfortable with real money first and that I'm profitable and then slowly scale up.

In regards to commissions, I've done some research and reckon I'll be looking at £5 - £10 per trade and possibly £20 a month for a charting package. I could be completely wrong here but like to think I'm in the right ball park. I'm accounting for this too and my focus is more on practising live trading with a small account. I'm happy to initially swallow my costs for commissions etc. I know a lot of people will probably disagree with my strategy on this, however, I think it's the best way to go.

So this is why I'm looking for a trading platform and charting software. I need to get comfortable with and be happy with the platform and charting software that I'm going to be using. Further comments and recommendations would be great.

There should be quite a few that match £5-£10 commission. Consider a new broker though by the name of DeGiro. £1-£2 commission. you'll be far better off. Iweb are £5 but an account opening of £200 so do try and shop around as much as you can.
even on an account size of 10k trading that frequently will eat into your capital.
As for a charting package..unless what you are looking for is very specific pro real time or tradingview are both free. Prorealtime you get a screener which you don't with trading view so I'd be surprised if you really did need a charting package saving yourself £20/month
so with prorealtime and degiro I've just saved you 60/month..
do consider this and don't think you have to spend a lot.
most importantly is your strategy, not your broker or your charting package. save your money and work on your strategy
if you need any help with any of this just let me know. I've done exactly the same as you so I know it works

 

[vchohan1]

Thanks all for the advice. I never actually thought of using a separate charting tool to my broker. I've always had the mindset that it would be great to have it in one, but actually it doesn't need to be.

There should be quite a few that match £5-£10 commission. Consider a new broker though by the name of DeGiro. £1-£2 commission. you'll be far better off. Iweb are £5 but an account opening of £200 so do try and shop around as much as you can.
even on an account size of 10k trading that frequently will eat into your capital.
As for a charting package..unless what you are looking for is very specific pro real time or tradingview are both free. Prorealtime you get a screener which you don't with trading view so I'd be surprised if you really did need a charting package saving yourself £20/month
so with prorealtime and degiro I've just saved you 60/month..
do consider this and don't think you have to spend a lot.
most importantly is your strategy, not your broker or your charting package. save your money and work on your strategy
if you need any help with any of this just let me know. I've done exactly the same as you so I know it works

I've just had a look at DeGiro and the prices are rock bottom, especially for the US stocks that I would like to trade. Have you used this broker before? Every time I shop around the same brokers and charting packages keep coming up so these recommendations are great! I will definitely take you up on the offer to help with my strategy. I'm also thinking of creating a journal, possibly even for my paper trading.

It's important to use a charting package and platform that you like. I was in a similar situation to yours and concluded that I couldn't find an ideal combination. Having defined what I required from my ideal package I worked backwards from there and concluded that I would have to use 2 separate applications. I haven't actually found this to be a disadvantage. Regarding IG: their basic (free) charting package which comes with the spread betting platform is really excellent IMHO if you don't need super sophistication (and the headaches that go with it). The only reason I don't use it as my main charting is that I need to code-up scans and one or 2 other bits and pieces for which I use an ancient copy of Metastock which I really like. I haven't found it a disadvantage to have separate chart and trading platform – in fact with a multiple monitor setup it works really well.

In my experience it's too easy to get hooked up on the nuts and bolts of platforms and charting and forget that a good trader can make decent profits regardless.

I think I will definitely be using either a split screen or dual screen set-up to be able see both at the same time. Also thinking about your point on how sophisticated I need the charting tool to be, actually, it doesn't need to be. I do have a requirement for when I search for other stocks to trade.


It's great to hear that a few of you have gone through a similar journey to myself.

In terms of a charting package the only thing I'm looking out for, which might actually be found somewhere else that I may not have thought of, is being able to list US stocks by greatest volume increase on the day, or percentage price increase on the day etc. tradingview.com gives some of this but I'm not able to list all stocks and order them the way I want.

Are there any charting packages or even websites I can use to sort lists by volume increase on the day etc.? This is an area I'm not familiar with.

 

[vchohan1]

I think I may have discovered that ProRealTime might actually give me what I want on this side. This could well be my tool to help find stocks. I need to learn how to use it though.

tradingview.com is great as it provies realtime data.

DeGiro could possibly be my trading platform. I just need to become familiar with it.

 

[vchohan1]

Malaguti - have you or do you currently use DeGiro? What are your thoughts on the platform?

 

[malaguti]

Malaguti - have you or do you currently use DeGiro? What are your thoughts on the platform?

vchohan1 - yes I currently use DeGiro (along with other broker accounts). I set up an account over the last few weeks
the platform is simple. no more complex than say charles stanley where the commission is 10x as much!
i only use a broker to make the transaction, nothing else. I'm not interested in broker charts
you can place various orders but I always just use a market order. I don't place stops with a broker so i couldn't comment on their fill/slippage rates

and yes, I can withdraw funds which should be the main important question..

hope this helps