Software

Every successful trader is highly experienced and knowledgeable with their preferred trading platform. It’s so important to know how to navigate easily and fluently so you can focus on the strategy and trades on hand. As well, the software used to trade needs to be lightning fast for executing trades in an instant. There are many factors involved that make up competent trading software. Which is why it’s important to learn what these factors are and what to look out for when choosing software to trade on. First off, let’s start with the basics on what trading software is.

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What Is Trading Software
By definition, ‘trading software are computer programs that enable the trading of financial products such as stocks and currencies.’ Trading software works as an intermediary between the investor and the broker, allowing the trader to place orders, analyse charts, and research the markets. Brokerages will offer certain trading software to their clients for the managing of their accounts and trading of financial products.

However, not all trading software is the same. Traders can often choose to use a third-party platform that utilizes different trading software to conduct their trades, analysis, and research. The fact that traders have this choice is very good because it encourages further development and competition among trading software and their platforms. This created an influx of online trading in recent years, resulting in the need for numerous sophisticated trading platforms. So, with so many trading platforms on the market, how do you know which one to choose? Check out our next point to learn just that.

What To Look For In A Trading Platform
Responsiveness
In today’s society everything is fast, and so should your trading platform. No matter what you are trading, you want a reliable and responsive trading platform to conduct your trades, research, and analysis. Without lightning fast and responsive software, you will have ‘slippage’, which is when you try and close a trade at one price, but by the time the trade closes its another price. This can amplify your losses or your gains. However, if it results in multiple amplified losses that can be very frustrating.

Reliability
Traders can use either a web-based platform, desktop platform, or mobile application to conduct their trading. Regardless of which one they use, they must ensure it can handle a large volume of trades during global economic events and news. Traders should find a reputable trading platform that is known not to crash during times like these.

User Friendly Interface

Another important aspect to consider is the interface of the platform. It makes a world of difference when the platform looks and feels good to use. If you can easily understand all the charts, tabs, buy orders and sell orders of a platform, your learning curve will be much more manageable.

Important Features

Accurate Quotes
It’s important that trading platforms provide up to date and accurate quotes. In a volatile forex market, the price of currencies is changing every second of the day, and you need software that can provide real-time up dated prices if you want to succeed.

Analysis Tools
Every platform should have numerous charting and analysis tools with different formats and styles to suit your trading needs. A nice feature that many platforms have is the ability to keep numerous charts on the screen at all times.

Automatic Trading
Some trading platforms utilize automatic trading software that gives you suggestions on what trades to make, or even places buy and sell orders automatically. As well, you can often input your own algorithmic trading strategy for the software to implement.

Copy Trading
Similar to automatic trading, copy trading allows traders to copy the trades of other successful investors. This feature can be especially useful for a novice trader who could use some insight.