Stock Trading Software

There are many different types of stock trading software. From basic and advanced software that comes with your online brokerage account, to a stand alone stock trading system that can scan the markets live and help determine which stocks to buy and when.

The page you are on now is an introduction to this topic. Here are links to additional pages I have about specific stock trading software:

• Market Club: a review of not just software but a suite of trading tools to select from. To find out what you get with MarketClub Click Here
• Wall Street Survivor: my review of their free Simulated Trading software to practice strategies without risking real money.

---

Once you have some basic knowledge and experience in stock trading under your belt, it's worth taking a look at some of the stock trading software that is available.

Stock trading software in its basic form, consists of the program you use from your online broker to access stock quotes. This is done either on a web based platform, or on a program that they let you download on your own computer.

These stock trading programs then allow you to place trades and do things such as monitor your trades and basic account management. Most of these basic stock trading systems also have basic charting capabilities.

Some online brokers have advanced charting capabilities. These allow you to use different technical analysis indicators over previous time periods as well as in real-time.

Online brokers often include these capabilities in the price you are paying, while others charge additional amounts.

---

The next level of stock trading software would be the ability to do back testing of certain types of trading strategies. With back testing software, you can see the number of winning and losing trades that would have occurred in the past, based on specific parameters you plug in.

An example of this would be buying when a stock crosses above its 200 day moving average and selling with a certain profit percentage. The results would show the number of winning and losing trades as well as how much money was made and lost on each trade. You can make adjustments to the parameters and configure your own system.

It takes a lot of patience to do back testing but it can be very helpful as well as profitable. Having this capability is helpful if you would like to maximize your probabilities of trading success.

Some online brokers such as TradeStation and Fidelity (using Wealth Lab Pro), have back testing capabilities built into them, while others sometimes offer them as add-ons. You can also find stand alone back testing software programs outside of your own broker.

---

Some of the best stock trading software can also perform real-time scans of the market, searching for stocks that meet certain parameters. Market Club has a great scanning tool available to its members that will alert you of any stocks that meet preset conditions.

Another option available is the capability to automate a stock trading system. Being able to automate a system that either you have designed or someone else, is every trader's dream of course.

Who wouldn't want a program that prints money automatically?

Seriously, being able to automate a stock trading system can be very helpful once you have done your research ahead of time. There are many professional traders that use automated systems.

Even the simple process of placing conditional orders into the market is considered to be automated. What automating does is take out the human emotion involved in your trading.

As you may or may not know, your emotions can be your worst enemy when trading stocks. Think of when a stock falls further than you expected and you tell yourself that you "can't sell now because you've lost too much money so far"; or you say "that you will not sell it now because you know it's going to go back up". By having an automated process, this will minimize the risks associated with emotions.

---

---

Return From "Stock Trading Software" to "Online Stock Trading Guide Home"

Go To "Stock Market Basics Archive"