Best Day Trading Software
Day traders need to utilize the best day trading software to generate exceptional returns. That’s because day trading is all about speed. Quotes, trading signals, order routing and order executions need to be fast and accurate. The best day trading software includes research platforms for analysis, scanners, brokerage trading platforms, and trading journals.
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Best Day Trading Software
- Trade Ideas: Best Scanner Sofware for Day Trading
- Cobra Trading: Best Direct-Access Broker for Day Traders
- Benzinga Pro: Best News Feed and Community for Day Traders
- Black Box Stocks: Best Day Trading Educator and App
- Edgewonk: Best Trading Journal to Import Day Trades
1. Trade Ideas: Best Scanner Sofware for Day Trading
Trade Ideas is the best stock scanning software for day traders. Users can scan and filter market data for over 500 different trading-related data points. The combination of all those filters allows you to create thousands of combinations. The most popular scans are the gap-scanner and the momo-scanner, but Trade Ideas also offers more than 20 pre-configured scanner layouts.
The market data subscription costs are already included in the monthly pricing, and Trade Ideas recently expanded the set of functionalities. For example, the artificial intelligence based stock screening algorithm identifies trade opportunities based on proven strategies. The generated trading signals and scans are available for subscribers, and every trade is tracked.
Once a strategy is identified and tested, the strategy can be traded manually based on the stock screener results or by using the API for automated trading. That makes Trade Ideas a top day trading software solution. Beginners will also enjoy the free trading room and free educational components Trade Ideas provides.
Best offers: 15% discount on all new Trade Ideas subscriptions with coupon code DAYTRADINGZ
2. Cobra Trading: Best Direct-Access Broker for Day Traders
Research tools like news feeds and stock screeners are essential to finding the right stocks, futures, or options to trade. But trades have to be executed, and trading needs an excellent brokerage for fast and accurate order routing and order execution. Day trading with high volume and frequency also requires excellent support to reach by phone immediately when needed.
Direct market access day trading brokerages require you to pay a fraction of a cent as trading commissions, but you gain access to fast servers, high-end platforms, and premium support in exchange. Day traders save money with fast and accurate order execution quality, even if a small commission is paid. Cobra Trading is a well-established day trading broker, offers excellent support and a free platform demo on request.
Best offer: 33% equity commission discount for life plus free software (DAS, Cobra Trader, or Sterling)
3. Benzinga Pro: Best News Feed and Community for Day Traders
Benzinga Pro is an excellent day trading software and suitable trading beginners who are a bit uncertain which path to take day trading the markets. Benzinga covers nearly all aspects a day trading software can do. You find a market scanner, news stream, options data screener, charting tool and trading chat in one place. Benzinga Pro does not have a specific focus.
Benzinga Pro is an all-in-one solution and a great way to start an orientation process. Once you discovered your favorite trading approach, you may consider subscribing to a tool that’s specifically designed to be the fastest and most accurate for exactly the features you are looking for. One fantastic thing about Benzinga Pro is the 14-day free trial. You can test all functionalities and features without limitation for 14 days. Once you decide to proceed with a paid subscription, ensure to use our promo code during the sign-up process to save 30%-35% immediately.
Best offer: 14 Day Free Trial, and 35% Off Benzinga Pro Essentials.
4. Black Box Stocks: Best Day Trading Educator and App
Black Box Stocks is particularly interesting for day trading beginners who want to join a day trading community. Black Box Stocks grows fast and provides free trading education for their subscribers with workshops on various day trading topics every week. Black Box Stocks is one of the best apps for day trading and provides a pre-configured stock screener with proprietary algorithms that ranks the trade alerts in real-time.
One outstanding functionality is its unusual options activity scanner. It scans the options market for unusual activity and separates between normal option block trades and the more interesting category options sweeps. The scanner results can be exported and analyzed further to develop a trading strategy based on the results. Black Box Stocks is an excellent decision for those starting with day trading. Even one month can provide clarity if the path of day trading is right for you.
Best offer: Full access to Black Box Stocks for only $79.97 in the first month (20% Off, the discount will be applied automatically).
5. Edgewonk: Best Trading Journal to Import Day Trades
Trading needs a trading journal, and that’s where Edgewonk comes into play. Traders can import all of their trades to EdgeWonk and analyze them intensively.
The stock market and financial markets, in general, offer many opportunities to day trade. A trading journal lets you analyze thousands of trades, and the chances are that you will identify the most profitable strategies and trading methods. Why should you proceed with trading strategies that generate no income in the long run? Right, there is no reason to do that, and Edgewonk helps you identify the best strategy and trading methods.
Best offer: Reduce the price by an additional $10 using this link with promo code DT10
6. Hammerstone Markets: Best Real-Time News Feed
Hammerstone Markets is the best news research day trading platform. The pure focus of this tool is news, news and news. Hammerstone Markets remains the leader in speed, and reliability is tailored for day traders. The platform is straightforward, and you log in via your browser or by using the mobile app.
Once logged in, you see a stream of the most recent news. A research team posts them, and if something is happening in the markets, you can see the analyzed reason for the move. This way, day traders can research the catalysts of a movement before executing the trading strategy. In addition, Hammerstone Markets offers a lower-priced news feed for novice traders and a higher-priced news feed for institutions.
Best Day Trading Software Summary
The best day trading software and trading platform is needed to archive outstanding results day trading. Especially speed matters to day trade successfully. Unfortunately, all of the mentioned trading software solutions require a paid subscription. So day traders have to consider spending about $300 per month for data feeds, charting software, day trading tools and day trading software.
A day trading stock screener like Trade Ideas and breaking news feed like Hammerstone Markets help spot market movements early. But, of course, institutions use those tools, and that is for a good reason.
Retail online brokers are an excellent choice for buy and hold investors, but most retail brokers can not compete with the execution speed day trading brokers provide. A pattern day trader often executes hundreds of trading per day, with a much higher trading activity than an average investor. It is also helpful to reach your broker with a phone call immediately instead of waiting 30 minutes or more when using a retail broker.
The decision about the chosen trading platform also depends on user experience, trading activity and pattern day trading eligibility. Today trade actively, pattern day traders have to maintain a minimum of $25,000 in their trading account.
Guide
Automated Day Trading Software
Automated day trading software is a powerful solution for experienced traders. Automated day trading software eliminates potential human error when trading strategies and executing trades. In addition, automation helps to reduce stress and keeps emotions out of the trading process. As a result, traders often see better performance, a more relaxed mind and more time for further analysis and strategy development.
Day Trading For Beginners
Day trading for beginners can be challenging and requires clear commitment. Day trading is more demanding than a 9 to 5 job, and a budget of $25,000 is needed to start day trading as a beginner. The trading frequency will probably start with about 10 trades per day and can go up to an average of 300 trades per day and more.
Day Trading Basics
The best online day trading software programs offer charting, real-time data, technical indicators, and pre-defined trading strategies with good profit potential. Retail brokers like TradeStation, E Trade and Interactive Brokers offer their clients API access to route orders from external signal giving tools directly via the brokerage API to stock exchanges like Nasdaq and NYSE. Good trading software has integrated hotkey trading or mouse click trading. A direct access trading platform like Cobra Trading or the LightSpeed Trader is more expensive but provides instant trade executions even for higher-sized orders.
Day Trader vs Swing Trader
The requirements of a day trader differ from other trading methods like swing trading. The chosen day trading platform should meet the exact needs depending on the trading style. Traders have to plan what to trade and how often. Also, stock trading is different from forex trading and futures trading. If you want to trade all assets, you may have to open various trading accounts to have the best trading platform in all situations.
Day Trading Platform
A day trading platform offered by the best online brokers is fast and provides unfiltered tick data. Most big retail brokerages have implemented the majority of the best indicators for day trading within their tool. The data centers are often located close to the stock exchanges like Nasdaq and NYSE. Stock traders enjoy level 2 or even full book access like Nasdaq total view with the full market depth and real-time data.
Costs per Trade
Retail brokers offer commission-free trading, but they force your order to go a pre-defined order route. If you want to trade commission-free, you must accept that the broker may match your order in-house or sell the order flow to a third party. With a low frequency of trades, that might be okay. If coded algorithms in C# or EasyLanguage for automated trading are preferred, using such an online retail broker can be beneficial. Day trading brokers charge about $0.005 per share traded or a fixed commission per trade. With higher trade frequency, the costs per transaction may go lower, and you can also negotiate your rates.
All-in-one Brokerage
Brokerages like TD Ameritrade, Interactive Brokers, E Trade or TradeStation allow clients to buy and sell nearly all assets from one account. Stock trading, ETF trades, option strategies and forex trading, and online retail broker can be the right decision if you start your investment and trading career. It will help to have such a platform in the short term, but you need to choose a specialist to increase profitability in the long term. Active traders and advanced traders most often start directly with day trading software tools and trading platforms for buying and selling as efficiently as possible.
Trading Platform Types
A trading platform can be web based or software installed on your personal computer with a desktop platform. Most trading platforms have integrated analysis tools, low cost or even free market data. The profit potential of a trading strategy increases with the speed of trade execution. Advanced traders
Pattern Day Trader Rule
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission defined the pattern day trader rule to protect private investors. The intention is to protect undercapitalized investors by limiting the number of day trades within a specific time range. As a result, day trading brokerages in the United States require an account minimum of $25,000 to day trade. This amount has to be maintained by traders. Otherwise, the number of day trades is limited to 4 within a 5 business day range.
Options Strategies and the PDT Rule
The PDT rule also applies to options strategies. The only asset excluded from the rule are future contracts. Those can be day traded with your favorite strategy in the short term without the need to take care of potential day trade limitations.
Chose Your Brokers and Analysis Tools
Brokers offer powerful analysis tools to their clients. Make sure to check if the broker of your choice provides web-based platforms or trading software tools for Windows and Mac and a mobile app for account access from everywhere. One of the best trading tools with an integrated paper trading account is offered by TradeStation. TradeStation currently offers a desktop platform in versions 9.5 and 10.0 with a backtest module, real time quotes and more. If TradeStation is not for you, you may consider Interactive Brokers instead. Interactive Brokers also has an integrated paper trading account. Both brokers have a low account minimum, and costs can be held down during paper trading.
Identify The Best Strategy to Buy and Sell
The best strategy to buy and sell stocks, options, futures and currencies depend on the time you can invest, your budget, day trading software, and experience. An active trader with 20 years of experience will trade differently than a beginner. The trade frequency per trading day can also make a difference from active traders to beginners using a day trading software tool with different portfolios. Make sure to analyze all your trades and use the day trading software that provides the best functionalities depending on your requirements to execute your trades quickly and accurately.
Cryptocurrency Trading
The spread between the bid and ask is massive for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Litecoin. Also, the brokerage commissions reduce the net profit significantly. The benefit is that the pricing data is free, and you can use credit cards to fund a crypto account. Still, as a day trader, you are better served to trade volatile stocks based on reliable stock quotes, low trading commissions by using great day trading brokerage platforms.
FAQ
Is day trading really worth it?
Day trading is worth it for about 10 percent of traders. Unfortunately, the success rate is relatively low, and most people fail on the journey to becoming successful day traders. Unfortunately, that’s the reality, and all those promising ads do not change anything in that situation. Day trading is tempting, requires a high commitment, the ability to learn and adapt, and excellent analytical skills. Also, a minimum of $25,000 is needed to have realistic chances to win in the long run. Some programs teach how to grow a small account fast to reach the minimum of $25,000 account value. Trading stocks comes with the lowest risk, while leveraged products and trading assets with time value factors have the highest risk. The best way for beginners to start their daily trading journey is by using a simulated trading account with real-time data and trade analysis tools like trading journals.
When to consider paid technical analysis tools?
Day trading software should be considered if the benefit of using it is higher than the subscription costs. Active trading requires an account minimum of $25,000, and beginner traders should try to keep software costs as low as possible. Simple analysis tools like technical indicators can be used with the brokerage account software instead of buying day trading platforms just for technical indicators. All traders need trading software, and beginners start with the tools from brokerages like TD Ameritrade, E Trade, Fidelity or the Interactive Brokers TWS.
What is the best day trading software for beginners?
The tremendous benefit of starting with free, easy-to-use trading software solutions from brokerages like TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, E-Trade, or Interactive Brokers is that traders save money right from the beginning. Even the brokerages like E Trade merging with Morgan Stanley and TD Ameritrade merged with Charles Schwab still make their software a good choice for beginner traders. The account option using a broker that only offers web-based trading is not the best choice for day traders since the order entry should be fast and efficiently possible. The bottom line is that a retail broker should be used for paper trading and the first steps. Once a trading strategy is defined, and the paper trading account sees significant growth, traders can open an additional account with a specialized day trading broker. Moving an account from brokerages like Schwab or Fidelity to other brokerages is possible.
What is the best technical analysis software?
Technical analysis is the most frequently used method to analyze financial markets. Technical analysis indicators like moving averages, Fibonacci retracements, support and resistance levels are integrated with many free software solutions and brokerage tools.
