Essential tools and equipment that you need to start day trading
Photo by Adam Nowakowski on Unsplash
Before you invest your money, you need to look at various avenues of investment. One of the ideas that you can look at is day trading. But before you can start, you need to have the right tools and equipment to be effective in your trades.
You have several equipment and tools that you can use to day trade. They are more or less the ones you would need to have in your home office. It would help if you were comfortable and ensure you have swift on the trades.
Below are some of the tools and equipment you need to be effective as a day trader
Computer
Modern-day trading, of all sorts, is majorly done online. It would help if you had the right computer to ensure that these trades go on effortlessly. The type of desktop or laptop you want to look at is with great speed and a good memory.
You don’t want a PC that lags or crashes often; this can make you lose money. You can find these here; you will find the right type of computer for your trading career. The computer will also work well with the necessary software and broker website.
Another thing you need to consider is that you will be jumping between broker and company websites; you will also have your chart software to analyze trades; you need two monitors. This is the preference; if you don’t have them, no biggie – but it’s ideal.
Telephone
As much as most trades today are done online, the internet can fail. At times, you can be in a place where there’s no internet. When this happens, you still need to contact your broker for your trades; what’s your other option for reaching them?
You have a cell phone; you now need to install a landline. This will make it easy to get in touch regardless of where you are. Importantly, you need to have your broker’s phone installed on your phone; you will have the number even if your computer crashes.
Internet
You need to have internet access, and it should be stable and fast enough. It should be something that can load web pages instantaneously. You need to test its capabilities first before you get the subscription.
If the internet can’t make the pages load that fast, you probably have the wrong subscription. You don’t want your internet to stall even for a minute –and you will be trading thousands of data points each sec. It would help if you had stability here.
When your internet lags, you will receive old data instead of new data. And if you want to make the best out of the situation, you will need to receive the most recent data. Ensure that you have internet access that makes your loading through data pages easy.
Day trading brokerage
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
You will then need a broker if you are to be a day trader. This is a company that will facilitate your trades – and not all are the same, though. Some brokers cater to day traders while others don’t; you need to find the one that caters to your needs.
If you make plenty of trades per day, you are likely to benefit from zero-commission trading. This is an undertaking that most brokers agreed to back in 2019. You will need to review the brokers’ platform, though, as others work well while others won’t, especially for day trading.
Most major banks offer brokerage services, but the problem is they provide them at a premium. Despite their commissions being high, they also don’t offer customized solutions to day traders. You are unlikely to get the complete services you need here.
You are better off using the small brokers as a day trader. You will need to ensure that they are regulated before using them.
Charting software
You will need to monitor trades and also use the data to predict newer trades. It would help if you had charting software for this. Several brokers offer you software options for your trades. You need one that allows you to pull up price charts so that you can make valuable trades.
You can view the charts easily as there are tick charts and timed charts. For the timed charts, you have 1-minute, 5-minutes and even hourly, and so on. You also need to figure out what you need as different software serve different traders.
As a day trader, you need to have software that helps you trade quickly and efficiently.
If you want to make it as a day trader, you need to have the right equipment. Above are the few tools and equipment you need to invest in to make it as a day trader.