Trading Room Setup

A Trading room setup – typically as we call it, is not necessarily a dedicated room. It can be an enclosed corner of your office or home or a dedicated desk and an area from where you can sit and trade. There are various options available in terms of personal computers whether it be desktops or laptops. When it comes to analysis of tick by tick data its very necessary to have an ideal configuration of the PC with a good processing speed and a really good internet connection.

Following is the configuration of the Mobile Laptop Setup that I use for trading ( it’s not a recommendation to purchase the same but its just an information of what I use)

• Lenovo Z510 laptop with 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7-7500u (7th Gen) processor.
• Windows 10 operating system which comes bundled with it.
• 8 GB DDR3 RAM
• 4GB NVIDIA GeForce 940MX graphics processor

It comes built-in with a 1 TB hybrid Hard Disk Drive with 8 GB Solid State Drive which I got changed for a dedicated 256 GB Solid State Drive as tick by tick data requires ideal reciprocation speed with the HDD for the PC to work smoother.

I use an Hathway Broadband 50mbps 100 GB FUP per month plan in Mumbai and have an Idea Net setter and my Vodafone mobile 3G   as backup and also use it when I am outside Mumbai.

Following is the configuration of the Custom assembled PC that I use for trading at office ( it’s not a recommendation to purchase the same but its just an information of what I use)

• Intel Core i7 3.4 GHz Processor
• Gigabyte XUD-5 Black Edition Motherboard
• Sapphire AMD FirePro W4100 2GB Graphics Card to run a Quad Monitor Setup
• We are thinking to upgrade the Graphics card to ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 3GB Dual-Fan OC Edition Graphics Card
• Kingston SSDNow M.2 SATA 240GB Solid State Drive (6Gbps) ( For Operating System & Software )
• 16 GB RAM ( 2 x 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RAM )
• Cooler Master Mid ATX Cabinet
• Corsair 750 Watt PSU – Power Supply Unit
• Corsair Cooler
• 4 x 21.5 Inch HD Monitors with DVI, HDMI, VGA multiple inputs ( Multiple inputs required so that it’s usable in any configuration )
• 1 x Benq 27 inch UHD Monitor
• Logitech Wireless Mouse & Keyboard ( Any wired Keyboard & mouse is also fine )
• Windows 10 Operating System

 

For people those who are learning to Analyse the markets or trade can also get away with a lower configuration of the PC which fits in their budget but as and when one requires, it’s important to have a well-configured PC and if it’s a desktop then one can even opt for a better configuration than the above.

When I am at the office, I prefer to use another desktop or laptop for the trading platform as it is a lot easier to analyze the charts on one and enter the orders on another.

Coming to the Analysis software, I started with Amibroker as it was sufficient for my analysis requirements where I wanted to see charts ranging from a 1-minute chart to basically any higher time frame charts. It has many built-in commonly used indicators and the indicators are built with Amibroker Formula Language (AFL) as we call it. There are many custom AFL available on the internet if you Google it. Mr. Rajandran R., founder of marketcalls.in has an extensive database of Amibroker AFL for analysis as well as backtesting.  For plotting Market Profile charts in Amibroker, I use the AFL code which was developed by Milind & Kaka from Inditraders and we have made a few changes to the look. You can download it from the following link – Market Profile Amibroker AFL

There are various options available for data feeds for feeding the Real-Time or End of the Day data into Amibroker. It’s important that you subscribe to Data from an authorized data vendor so that its authentic data. True Data is a good option, to begin with.

Currently, we are using advanced charting tools comprising of Market Profile, Footprint/Orderflow charts. There are various options available for these charts and earlier we used the Professional plus Market Profile edition of Market Delta Charts but as Market Delta is part of CQG, they do not offer data for Indian markets since Jan2017. Currently, we use Investor RT by Linnsoft with Core Platform plus Profile package, Volume Analysis package and Trading systems package (Cost is $100 per month).

As the order flow charts require tick by tick data (tick by tick is important to analyze the true Bid x Ask volume generated at each tick ). We use e-signal (Cost is $145 for Data Access and stocks and futures subscription + $11 + $11 NSE Exchange Fees for 2 segments per month) real-time NSE data for Cash, F&O and MCX Futures segment.

We also use NinjaTrader for plotting OrderFlow charts and you can feed data through True data for OrderFlow charts. We are developing few add-ons for NinjaTrader so that we can share it with the community and empower the traders with the tools that we use.

You can download the Investor RT definition for Market Profile chart for Nifty Futures from the following link: Market Profile Chart Definition for NSE-Nifty Futures

After downloading the text file, open it in Notepad and select the entire text by pressing Ctrl + A and copy it. Go to Market Delta and from the file menu > go to open definition or press Alt + 2 and the chart will pop up on the screen.

For footprint and order-flow charting and analysis I use a proprietary custom-built chart in Market Delta so unable to publish the same.

You can use AMS Delta Print add-on for Investor RT for plotting various order-flow charts. To know more about the options available in AMS Delta Print, yo can visit this link

 

Till now we discussed the Computer Hardware and Software but that is just the technical part of it. To become a good trader we should maintain a pleasant atmosphere in the place that we sit to trade. The sitting position should be relaxed and it’s important to take short breaks during market hours so that we do not get over stressed.

Not all the news on the TV is useful so better not to keep a TV in the trading room. ( I don’t have a TV in the trading room )

Consume a lot of water to keep yourself truly hydrated.

Smoking can lead to anxiety so not a good idea to smoke in the trading room and it helped me a lot in decision-making to quit, while in the trading room.

Hope that this information is useful for aspirants who want to get an extra edge in their trading and analysis.

Happy Trading !!

Disclaimer: The Hardware or the Software mentioned above is not at all a recommendation to purchase/subscribe and it depends on a person’s self-discretion and comfort level. Lenovo, Intel, Asus, Nvidia Windows 8.1, Amibroker, Market Delta, Foot Print and Market Profile are the registered trademarks of their respective owners and we duly acknowledge the same. Trading in Derivatives/Stocks involves high risk and is not suitable for every individual. The usage of the above information is in accordance with the Terms of Use and Risk Disclosure of this site.