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Investing Trading Software That's Right For You

Aug. 30, 2013 7:00 PM ET
Please Note: Blog posts are not selected, edited or screened by Seeking Alpha editors.

What to Look for in Choosing Investing Software that's Right for Your Trading Style

Practice on a Free Demo Trial First Before Purchase

Most trading software comes with a free trial so you can demo it first before purchasing. If your a new investor trader practising trading the markets is a good learning experience. If you are a beginner, try practicing trading the markets first, and most importantly, do it as if you are trading your actual real money to simulate your real trading account, your real trading strategies, in real market conditions.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Any purchase of software should come with free customer service via email, instant messaging, support ticket system, and or phone access.

Real-Time and or End-of-Day Market Data

Along with the software you will need market price data to be inserted into it. Is your software provided with free or fee based data? If so, if its fee based how much are the charges for the data you need? How accurate is the data? If your software is not provided with data, what data providers and format can you use with your software?

Technical Fundamental Trading Strategies Indicators Systems

Theres many different types of profitable trading strategies, indicators, and systems based on technical and fundamental analysis. Most software has and deals with technical analysis of stock futures forex price charts. Some softwares have fundamental screeners built in to also analyze company valuation ratio metrics. Look for software that either has some technical strategies, indicators, systems that are built in and or come as an additional add-on or plug-in. More comprehensive software includes or is stand alone with a fundamental valuation screener.

Get Some Continuing Education and Training with the Software

Most but not all software providers provide free or fee based education and training for using their software, and basic to advanced investing trading education. Software product use training is a must to use it correctly, and basic advanced investing training is a big plus for your continuing education to master the financial markets.

Specific Things to Look for in Software Packages

Charting

Multiple price plot styles: OHLC, HLC, Line, Bar, Candlestick.

Plot hundreds of the most popular technical and fundamental indicators.

Create your own indicators.

High resolution and fast chart rendering.

Link your symbol and/or time frame to any other chart or watchList.

Tab, float or dock multiple charts within a workspace.

Save your own user defined chart templates with your indicator parameters and custom color settings.

Arithmetic, logarithmic, percent and fixed percent scaling.

A large drawing tool library including trendlines, Fibonnaci retracements extensions, regressions, shapes & lines and text.

Scan, sort and alerts that come directly from the indicators on your chart.

WatchLists

Scan, sort and alert from hundreds of pre-configured and automatically updated system lists and indexes, plus your own personal watchlists.

Show multiple data columns for technicals and fundamentals.

All data column values stream and update in real time.

Scan and sort technical fundamental data in real time.

Flag stocks to allow quick organizing of your own personal watchlists.

Create and save templates for quick access to your favorite charts and data.

Easy sorting of your watchlists to access the data you want the most.

Link the active symbol in a watchlist to any other chart in your workspace

Tab, float or dock multiple watchlists within your workspace.

Scanning Screening Sorting

Fast scanning screening and updates in real-time with your market data. Different types of software can take seconds to minutes to hours perform.

Use pre-defined scan screen conditions or create your own scans.

Choose from hundreds of available conditions or create your own.

View your scan screen conditions directly on a chart to see them correlate with your chart indicators.

Instantly sort and re-sort your watchlist and scan results with as few clicks as possible.

Alerts

Price, trendline, indicator and condition alerts.

Always running, even if your computer isn't on.

Alert notification via the application or by email or by text message.

Set reminders to review specific symbols.

Notes, News and Chat

Take and keep your own personal notes or share them with other software users.

Attach charts, watchlists, scans or entire workspaces to any note.

Review your personal notes for the active symbol, right at your fingertips.

View other users public notes for the active symbol.

Quickly find all the symbols with your own notes.

View the current and historical news on the active symbol.

View and filter in real-time social networking feeds of notes showing what other people are discussing and trading.

Discuss market strategy with other software users live and in real time with a chat function.

Market Data

Always up to date, streaming data feed either by data download or data updates.

US Common Stocks & Indexes, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), Mutual Funds

Other global common stocks & indexes for the markets you trade.

Forex currency pairs.

Connections to thrid party advisory alerts services.

Click the Links Below to Review Quality Investing Trading Technical Fundamental Software Packages

Track

Track 'n Trade Commodity Futures Forex Stocks Trading Software
Download Free Trial
of Track 'n Trade Ultimate Trading Machine Software. Trade with the infamous Bulls 'n Bears Advantage Plug-in! You can also set up your own unique trading systems using the Autopilot for Track 'n Trade LIVE Futures or Forex.

Worden Brothers Telechart TC2000

Worden Brothers - Telechart, TC2000, and Mobile Trading Platforms
Stock Market Charting Data Research and Online Market Tools
Free Trial
.
TC2000 continues to be the Stocks & Commodities Magazine reader's choice year after year for two good reasons - ease of use and speed. No other charts are as easy or as fast to scan, sort, tweak and browse. Bundle that with the fantastic personal note system, daily expert chart lessons and notes from other TC2000 users and integrated Third Party Reasearch and you'll see why TC2000 is the ultimate in convenience when it comes to staying in control of your charts and data.

Finviz Elite

FINVIZ Stock Screener Elite
Finviz provides leading financial research data, analysis and visualization, and offers the fastest and the most advanced stock screener available online, interactive markets maps, innovative market analysis and institutional services. Traders, individual investors and financial institutions including Pimco, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan use Finviz Elite. Maybe you should too to be profitable. Trade with very low-risk and high-reward using market neutral statistical arbitrage trading strategies with Finviz stock correlation data.

Quantpedia

Quantpedia Screener and The Encyclopedia of Quantitative Trading Strategies
Choose your trading strategy from simple to very complex. From short-term to long-term. Equities, bonds, commodities or FX. We extracted explicit trading rules in plain language along with performance and risk characteristics and descriptive classification information. You can screen categorized data, see transparent visualizations, and examine related strategies. Avail of free and premimum Quantpedia services.

InstaForex Metatrader

Instaforex Metatrader PC and Mobile Platforms
Forex - Gold Silver Copper Oil - Commodities - Futures - NYSE CFD's

Industry standard Metatrader platform. ECN & Standard Spread Accounts. ECN Spreads As Low as 0.10 Pips. 3 Pip Standard Account Trading Spreads. Trade Gold Silver Copper Oil and Agriculture Commodities Also. Forex Analytics Buy Sell Trade Signals. Metatrader Expert Advisors Auto-Trading & Free VPS Service. Mobile SmartPhone Metatrader Software Trading.

Metastock

Thomson Reuters Metastock Pro
The MetaStock PowerTools: Power to the People. The PowerTools include the Explorer, the System Tester, and the Expert Adviser. They come standard in all versions of MetaStock, and are designed to help traders of all levels.

Nison Candle Scanner

Steve Nison's Candle Scanner Software
Reduce hours of tedious candle charting analysis to just minutes easily with one click. Save hours of precious time, and boost your trading profits with candlestick guru Steve Nison's Candle Scanner. All of the filtering and analysis that Nison Candle Scanner performs for you is done instantaneously over the Internet using proprietary filtering technology that alerts you to candlestick patterns in real-time. You can filter all daily or longer term markets (plus intraday for alerts), all the time, and have only those meeting pre-specified criteria instantly be called to your attention. What could be easier and more powerful!

Market Analyst

Market Analyst - Technical Analysis Charting Software
Download Free Trial
You need your charting package to be flexible. You need software that is extensible - able to grow with your education. You need your data to be reliable. We understand, and that is why Market Analyst is the program you need for your technical analysis. Market Analyst contains many unique features not found in any other charting application in the world. If you would like to find out how Market Analyst can give you the edge in your trading then read on, or download a copy right now.

William Gann

Market Analyst Gann Trading Software
Technical Analysis Trading Software. Market Analyst has created a Trading Software that repeats many of Gann's techniques in a charting application that traders like you who are not mathematicians could still use the advanced techniques that Gann used to assist his trading. Over the last decade we have met with many of the greatest educators who use Gann techniques in their trading, learning from them how to apply these techniques in an advanced charting application.

Decision Bar Trading Software

DecisionBar Trading Software
DecisionBar Trading Software Zeros In On Perfect Trading Opportunities In Real Time, and removes The Deadly Guessing from Picking Winners! Free "3 Dangerous Trading Myths".
DecisionBar places historical trading signals on your chart exactly where they would have occurred in real time, so you can review them and optimize your trades for current market conditions. Support and resistance (supply and demand) change from minute to minute.

Ninja Trader

Ninja Trader Platform
Free Demo
Ninja Trader the combined result of an industry leading trading platform powered by an institutional grade trading engine that is managed by an experienced team of network professionals. Solutions for self-directed traders, automated systems and API developers all in one package.

Nison Candle Scanner Trading Software
CandleStick Trading Software for NinjaTrader

Volcone Analyzer Options Trading Software

Volcone Analyzer Options Trading Software
This type of program is simply not available anywhere else, at any price. We hired a top financial programmer to create this software exclusively for us, based on secret proprietary algorithms. It's involves complex calculations, and enough number crunching to keep a team of mathematicians busy for weeks, but you're about to find out how to get your hands on this tremendous software, which will do all this for you in a matter of seconds.

Historical Quotes Downloader

Comprehensive Downloader for Historical End-of-Day and Intraday
Stock Forex Futures Quotes from 50 Exchanges and Forex Markets.

Stock Signals Alerts

Live Trading Seminars

Stock Option Forex Futures Training Seminars Webinars Workshops
Click Here For The Complete 2013 Schedule

Professional investors traders teaching successful low-risk high-reward
trade strategies. Power profit secrets for stocks, options, forex, futures
investing trading success. Or avail of Home Study Courses and or
Trading Softwares available to improve your investment returns.

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