Trading software

There are a lot of software solutions available for traders.  Some of them are custom written, some are off-the-shelf, some are combinations where something is bought from one vendor and customized by another.  I prefer something more off-the-shelf so I’ve started checking into TradingSolutions.

After using Microsoft Excel for years for a myriad of things, keeping tracking of my trading is easy with Excel so I’m sticking with that.  But I have never liked having to visit Yahoo!’s finance section and check history for a stock when I know that I have most of the information already, having kept streaming quotes open for years now.

Charting is great, it shows a real history of a stock though unless you are checking online finance sites like Google’s finance and Yahoo!’s finance, you aren’t going to mix news with chart histories (which can be entertaining, though not always useful).  Everyone could use a decent stock charting tool, and sometimes Quotetracker isn’t quite as powerful as you might need (though at free or near free, it’s a good deal).

Enter TradingSolutions, with software available for a free demo (I highly recommend you download it and check it out).  I have started playing with the software and though the price is a little cost prohibitive for my competition account, it would actually be a worthwhile deal for stock tracking.  If I wind up buying the software, I believe that it could actually give me a little leverage over Lindsey.

After downloading the demo software I was welcomed in the tradional manner, giving an option to see the odd logo but providing useful information on my evaluation period remaing (30 days, I better order quick!):

Time for just jumping in.  The demo stock histories they include are pretty old, it would be nice to see something from recent history, but at least I recognized the symbols (I’ve seen other software that uses obscure stocks as for their demo information).  I opened the AMGN info:

The Amgen chart was pretty unimpressive, but I can edit the colors later after I’ve decided to start using the software on a more permanent basis.

Everyone needs help when using a new product (RTFM), the help CHM seemed pretty detailed:

I actually didn’t need to spend too much time in the help section as my setup was pretty basic for now.  Although, I did want to change my menu order, I guess that’s the computer geek in me, so I have to make menu changes so that I can pretend that I have some sort of control.  Moving items in the menu is quite easy, just hold the ALT key and start moving menu entries around:

Now that I have a more preferred order, it’s time for me to check into the history reportting detail.  The good news, I can export the data into a simple spreadsheet like-appearance.  I like this, it reminds me of Excel or Lotus 123 (don’t laugh, I use to run Lotus 123 from 5 1/4 floppy):

I like the look and feel of the software.  The strengths seem pretty deep and so far except for old demo data, I haven’t found anything negative about the software.

So as I continue with Quotetracker for now, I will start looking deeper at TradeSolutions software and maybe I’ll eventually make a change.

Take the time to download the demo (it’s 59MB which shouldn’t interrupt your streaming of webcams — ya, you know I’m talking about): TradingSolutions demo download.