Stock Investment Software

The most basic trading software is the software program you use with your online broker.  That includes stock quotes and basic charting. This type of platform handles placing trades, monitoring your portfolio, simple account management and basic charting capabilities. Due to competition brokers have begun to included advanced real-time charting and many different types of technical analysis indicators.

Once you have basic knowledge of stock trading. You must decide what type of trading software is best for you. Software ranges from very basic to extremely advanced. There are countless options, features and types of software.

Most online brokers include some type of trading software in their platform.  But, most professional traders look for third-party software to use instead of the software included with their brokerage platform.

Finding the best stock investment software for you ?

The answer depends on what type of trader you are and which determines what you your software to do.

Questions to ask yourself

  • What type of trader are you? Do you trade and hold your position for 5 minutes, 5 hours or 5 days?
  • Do you need real time streaming quotes and charts or is end of day (EOD) software ok?
  • Do you need a very basic user friendly stock trading software.?
  • Do you need very advanced real time scanning features?
  • Do you need to do Backtesting?
  • Will you need a system that allows you to program your own parameters for scanning the market for trades?
  • Does the software need to be highly customizable?
  • Do you want the software to not only recommend stocks but buy and sell prices?
  • Do you need to be able to place conditional orders?
  • Automated stock trading- so that the software actually places and manages your trades for you?
  • Are you going to be trading options or futures?
  • Will you use neural network and genetic algorithms?

Tips for selecting Stock Investment Software

  1. Reputation of the company
  2. Money back guarantee- Free trial period
  3. User manual/tutorial (hardcopy, troubleshooting index and examples, easy to understand)
  4. Ability to customize -user interface, modify screens, charts and reports
  5. Ease of Use/Installation
  6. Intuitive navigation, user-friendly features
  7. Initial cost as well as the recurring charges
  8. Demonstration disk or program

Stock Investment software serves many purposes:

1. Searching for high probability buy/sell signals

2. Backtesting

3. Forecasting market tops and bottoms

4. Identifying trends forming

5. Identifying breakouts

6. Automating your trading

7. Alerts for preset events i.e. when a price target is reached

8. Pattern Identification

Download and try out any software program before buying it to see if it suits all of your needs. All of the best software programs have a free trial, or a 100% money-back guarantee.

Do not trust stock trading software that promises you to make you rich or that can predict the future price or behavior of a stock.

Key Stock Investment Software Features

Backtesting - Back testing is simply creating a trading strategy, inputting your trading parameters and having the software program do a simulation based on historical data to see that number of winning and losing trades you would have and determine how profitable that strategy is. Back testing can be a very arduous process , but also very helpful in creating a strategy and maximizing the likelihood of successful trades.

Automated Stock Trading Systems – are another type of stock trading software. This system allows you to create your own stock trading system that automatically places trades according to your parameters. One of the greatest and most common downfalls of traders is lack of discipline and allowing human emotions to cloud your judgment. Automated trading removes a person’s inability to do what they know they should do, such as take a loss and sell rather than cross your fingers and pray.

Tradestation includes EasyLanguage which is a very powerful programming software to write your parameters for backtesting. Note that it is not easy to program a backtest. StockWatch Pro and NeoTicker are newer and much easier to program for backtesting.

Deciding which is the best technical analysis software depends on the requirements of the trader.

Types of  Stock Investment  Software

End-of-Day Stock Trading Software

A very popular time frames for technical analysis software is the ‘End-Of-Day’ (EOD). Daytraders really have no interest in EOD data software. This is more for longer term investors. They analyze the market after it closes. EOD software is simply charting software that plots the stock or markets in all different time frames, with chart and various indicators. Day traders may use EOD to find stock candidates but need real time software to trade. Some EOD software that is highly respected is Worden’s Gold Tele-Chart ($29.99 month), AIQ $74 per month, Metastock End-of-Day ($449) plus data feed, NeoTicker EOD are the two leaders in this field.

Before you begin investing, you must decide what type of investor you are. What kind of trades will you be making? Will you be buying stocks and holding them for a long or short period of time? A stockbroker or brokerage firm buys and sells stocks on your behalf. There are many online brokers to choose from. but you must take many things in the consideration before picking one.