Free Stock Trading Software
Dec 10th, 2009
In order to develop your own stock trading regimen, you will need a free stock trading software package. The basic idea is to have a place where you can go to test out certain trading strategies and be able to analyze the results. There are a couple of different ways to go about obtaining stock trading software. There are stand alone software packages that simply allow you to enter trading criteria. There are virtual trading markets that simulate what stock trading is like in the form of a game. Then there are the software packages that online brokers include with opening an account.
If you are looking for free stock trading software that does more than just analyze the data using the criteria that you give it you may be looking for something that is more of a hybrid between trading software and a trading system. Many of the stand alone software packages come with pre-installed technical indicators that you can use to get buy/sell signals. There are quite a few options for stand alone stock trading software. I have never used one of these programs as I prefer to grind through the process of developing my own system. I also find that the software offered by a couple of online brokers to be exemplory. A few of these stand alone software packages have free trials that you can sign up for to test out the software. I have yet to find one that offers truly free stock trading software. I would suggest looking into the free trials before purchasing anything.
There are a couple of virtual money trading games that provide the user with free software to trade stocks. Some of these games are based on current market prices (usually delayed 20 minutes or more) and some of them are completely fictional with made up stocks and commodities. One of the more popular virtual trading games that comes to mind is called wall street survivor. They basically give you a $100,000 virtual account and let you practice stock trading with that account. These guys offer prizes to the top 10 virtual traders every month. This is a good way to get your feet wet in the stock market without ever opening a real trading account.
The last place to look for free trading software is with one of the established online discount brokers. Nearly all of these brokers offer some sort of stock trading software for charting. Three brokers jump to mind when I think about the software packages: ThinkorSwim, Scottrade, and TradeStation.
ThinkorSwim has one of the most robust free trading platforms available. It is a desktop application that you download and install on your computer. The platform then connects to ThinkorSwim and sends live market data to your computer. If you trade with ThinkorSwim you can use this desktop software to actually execute trades. No need to log in through the browser and trade that way. This software has it’s own programming language for those of you who need more customization. You can pretty much design any condition that you want to analyze stocks with. I am very impressed with their software.
Scottrade has a nice combination of stock trading software. The browser based charting package is excellent for beginners because it explains what most of the traditional technical indicators are used for. The browser based charts are easily customized, and clean to look at. Scottrade also has a nice desktop platform for more advanced users. They offer level II trading for an additional fee. Scottrade is a nice balance between discount broker and full service broker also. They operate many local branches throughout the country.
Trade Station is renowned for it’s stock trading software. They were one of the first brokers to offer a robust “back testing” feature with their software. This feature is invaluable when trying to develop your own stock trading system. The drawback with Trade Station is that their stock trading software is not free. The last time I checked there was a pretty hefty monthly charge for using the software. You either pay the monthly fee or meet account balance and activity requirements in order to use the software. As far as technical analysis goes this is premier software. Being able to easily go back and see if a certain trading strategy would have profited historically is a phenomenal tool.
These are your basic options when looking for free stock trading software. We always advocate that traders spend a certain amount of their time practicing the art of stock trading. Finding a suitable software package that helps you spend some time learning new methods is well worth it.
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