Five Characteristics of a Good Trading Platform from John's blog
I have certainly traded in on a variety of trading platforms throughout the length of my career. Some platforms have been a joy and a sheer pleasure on which to work, and other platforms made me want to set my hair on fire. The variety and quality of trading platforms available to traders varies from awful platforms to excellent platforms.
Word out to meet, I would simply list the platforms that are of high quality and list the platforms that were awful. Unfortunately, if i took that approach the heap of legal cases and cease and desist would have my post office box stuffed. So i have chosen some characteristics of great platforms and enumerate why I think they are particularly effective.
Of course, the effectiveness of any platform is directly related to the standard of the data feed. For the purposes of this article, we will assume all platforms have an adequate data feed and eliminate that variable from the discussion.
A good platform has a quality set of charting tools you can use.
When trading and active chart it is essential to be able to lure trend lines, Fibonacci retracements, pivot points, and a host of other tools that traders other than myself may regard as necessary. You should not have to have a certain amount in physics in order to facilitate the drawing of these symbols. The process for entering trend lines and other symbols should be effortless and accomplished without excessive thought. crypto bot After all, most of your focus in trading is the price action on the chart not figuring out how to draw up lines on your chart.
A good platform should be easy to read and think of.
A good platform should be easy to read and set up. You should not have to read a 200 page manual in order to operate the software. The chart should be clear and easy to understand and the listing tellings should be legible and prominent. Platforms that are difficult to set up, or require daily maintenance to set up waste valuable trading time and ultimately cost the investor money. A quality program will also save your valuable settings from the previous day and when you begin the program the following day the actual settings should appear, you should not need to add your oscillators and indicators on a daily basis.
A good platform has a complete set of oscillators and indicators.
There is nothing more annoying than using a platform it does not have a complete set of indicators or a means to add those indicators to the chart. Many budget platforms feature five or six basic indicators and that is the extent of their functionality. Further, a good platform should allow you to adjust schedules and other variables in the indicators to your personal preference. Once again, it should not take too much time to perform these functions. They should be self-explanatory and not require paging through the dreaded 200 page manual to ascertain how to set a 14 period setting on a item funnel listing.
A good platform allows for a number entry and exit options.
A good trading platform allows you to quickly set the number of contracts you intended trade while also offering you the way to set your profit target and stop loss limit. This should be a seamless activity and not require too much time. Most good trading platforms also have a provision that allows you to scale out of trade at certain profit points. Further, a good platform will have an easily understood trailing stop feature that is simple to set up. You should also be able to set up a simple segment trade with a minimal amount of effort.
A good platform never fails or accidents
There is no worse feeling in trading than being in an active trade and the platforms software fails. There is no justification for software incompatibilities with os's. The platform is the substance of your profession and may perform as a result. This particular requirement is one of my pet peeves, as i traded in ones on a platform that was very unstable and generated for a long and frustrating day. I have never used that platform again, and never will. Software designers are well aware of the design flaws inherent in trading platforms and there is absolutely no reason that these flaws should not be addressed in a manner which insurers the investor of a crash free trading experience. There is nothing worse than push chair software.
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