Toolzzz

Besides a broker you can rely on you need some kind of tools, or at least, one tool.

In the past i often focused on permanent looking for new great holy grail tools.
Well, there are many trading tools offered by many companies with tons of varieties for anything.

I tell you what i found for myself.

One thing is clear, if you want to trade, you need someting to visualize what you do.
So you need a CHARTING TOOL ;-)

There are many vendors for charts. Some are expensive, some are verry expensive,
some are mid-priced and some are for free; as in most other businesses...

I had charting tools from many vendors in every price category.
On crucial thing for me was that the more money a tool costs, the more i´m under presure to get in the money again. So when i pay 150 USD a month for a charting tool, then i have to make sure, that my income is bigger then my outcome... ...again like in most other businesses...

Right now i´m using a free tool, called QuoteTraker with the IB-Datafeed. Right now i could afford to switch to other charting tools but everytime i get to the point where i tend again to swich the vendor, i ask me --> WHY.
QuoteTraker is easy to use, QuoteTraker gives me more effort then i could expect for paying not a dime. This does not have to be my final decition, but for now i stay with this combination, IB+Quotetracker.
Should i sometimes swich again, i would switch to esignal. The reason is, that some things i do manualy every day could be done automaticly with their efs-studies. However, its a double-edged sword, because now i have to be attentive all the time and "feel" with the market. When everything would be plotted automaticly, then my manulay work would be reduced, but would it effect my trading results in a positive manner ? Well, i dont know yet, but who knows, may i find it out somtimes in the future.

Another point why i stay with QT+IB is that i just dont need complicated features or indicators or one of all this crazy things that many tools offer.
What i need is a Chart that shows me the price- and the volume action.
Thats it. Anything else is not important in my trading.

What other tools could be usefull.

Analyser:
Well i recently had a tool for tracking my trades and analysing them in many fashions.
I´m not longer using this tool because i said to myself, hey, this is a good idea to log every
trade you make, but why paying someone else for something, that i could do by myself.
So instead of uploading every trade in this tool, i log every trade i make by myself in a similar manner. When using IB, you have the possibility to modify trading exports in any way you want.
Put them in a excel file, analyse it, thats it. This in combination in making a screenshot of every trade and putting all the details in this chart and saving it for further reference is all i need.
I´m happy with this and i tell you something. Focusing more on my trading logs is one of the most important things that made my trading more successful.

Scanner:
As most of you know, there are many vendors out there who offer scanners for probably anything you can think about. I was also using one of this and at the end of the day i have to say, that they cant give me more, then i can get for free as well. Sure, with a free source you cant check of right now a share´s price is crossing the DMA from a SMA over the EMA in relation to the DJ and outperforming the S&P samethime while making a new high and trading outside the previous day range. But heck, what do you need this stuff to ? I dont need it, so i dont use such a scanner anymore.

Excel:
yep, i use it and i analyse my trades up and down. Why do i do this ?
Well, because this makes me successful. You job does not end with hitting buy or sell.
More important are your preperations and your postprocessing.

Ok, thats it for now.

NEXT: shares, futures, options, cfd´s or other exotic trading vehicles ?