16 Jul Software a trader might want to use

#Fin­twit #Day­trad­er #Day­trad­ing #FXsyn­er­gy #StreamDeck #Dis­play­Fu­sion #soft4fx 

▶ I had writ­ten this post some time ago but for­got to upload it ◀

Here is a short­list of the soft­ware that I use that has made my life much eas­i­er. As a trad­er but also gen­er­al­ly in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and dare I say gam­ing (cru­cial part of life imo). I had shared this with oth­er traders before but decid­ed to ded­i­cate a post to it. 

All these soft­ware pack­ages have way more fea­tures than I use myself. I am just shar­ing how I have imple­ment­ed them to stream­line my process­es. It might not be for you but I hope it helps even per­haps in the slight­est. As with all good things. It will prob­a­bly take some time to set this up. Not that it’s too hard or any­thing. Just takes time to adjust to your pref­er­ences. If there are any issues I am will­ing to help out. Just hit me up and I’ll do my best to help out. 

FX Synergy (Edit: I no longer recommend this software)

• This is an addon for your MT4 plat­form (they are work­ing on adding sup­port for Meta­Trad­er 5, Nin­ja­Trad­er, cTrad­er and Sier­ra Chart.)
• Month­ly sub­scrip­tion of USD37/month, USD370/year, some­times there are dis­count offerings.

This has made the biggest impact on stream­lin­ing my trad­ing so that I can focus on what mat­ters: trad­ing. The soft­ware helps me always risk 1% on any giv­en trade. No need to fum­ble around in the heat of the moment to cal­cu­late con­tract size. Just set SL (that you can deter­mine in your pre­set) and your TP. And the soft­ware cal­cu­lates posi­tion siz­ing. You can set a time-based exit. Trail­ing stops. All the good stuff. You prob­a­bly already have some ideas on what you would like to have in your trad­ing soft­ware, well chances are FX syn­er­gy offers it. 

Fur­ther­more, I have been accus­tomed to trade off a demo account that I have been using for quite some time. FX syn­er­gy can help you con­nect up to 20 accounts. In my exam­ple the demo account is the mas­ter. Live accounts are ‘slave’ accounts to which trades get copied over to. I like to have one MT4 plat­form ded­i­cat­ed to one asset (so I have mul­ti­ple instances of MT4 installed on my PC) so that I do not need to switch pro­files on one MT4 plat­form. I use one for an overview of the assets I have trad­ing that day. Then ded­i­cat­ed MT4 plat­forms for each of those assets. With FX syn­er­gy all these accounts are connected. 

Anoth­er sell­ing point is for exam­ple the fact that my live account broker’s time does not align with the Lon­don Open. My demo account does. No issue now since I won’t even be look­ing at my broker’s account/chart. I do every­thing off the demo account and every­thing gets copied light­ning quick. No notice­able lag whatsoever. 

There are far more fea­tures that FX syn­er­gy offers that I could get into but I only use the ones above (for now).

Their sup­port is quick and great and are open to sug­ges­tions for future fea­tures. I actu­al­ly have put in a request and they were very open to it. Hope­ful­ly soon they can roll it out in an upcom­ing update. What this fea­ture is I will talk more in-depth in a future post so stay tuned for that. 

FX Syn­er­gy link — I NO LONGER RECOMMEND THIS SOFTWARE. I WILL ELABORATE ON THIS AT A LATER STAGE AND GIVE AN UPDATED RECOMMENDATION

DisplayFusion

• For most pur­pos­es FREE. There is a paid ver­sion (one-time USD 44 pur­chase) that I use as I like to sup­port the devel­op­er. I think the options that I’ll dis­cuss here are most­ly free. 

I don’t know how I lived before this soft­ware. If you are like me and have a mul­ti-mon­i­tor, mul­ti-pur­pose set­up then Dis­play­Fu­sion is a must. My office is part trad­ing desk, part work­ing desk, part bat­tlesta­tion (gam­ing, sim rig, etc.)

I can set up pro­files in Dis­play­Fu­sion with key­board short­cuts to load a pro­file. Let’s say I only want to race on my sim­u­la­tion rig / cock­pit. I press a but­ton on my Stream Deck (which I will get into lat­er, but you can use any macro key­board) and only my sim rac­ing mon­i­tors turns on. If any oth­er mon­i­tor was on it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly turn these off. Anoth­er press of a but­ton and I get to my trad­ing desk set­up where I have a mul­ti mon­i­tor set­up ready for me to go. 

On top of that. For exam­ple, for my trad­ing set­up, I have vir­tu­al screens on each mon­i­tor. Let’s say on my ultra­w­ide mon­i­tor that I trade off of. I divide the screen vir­tu­al­ly into 3 sec­tions where the biggest is in the mid­dle. On the left and right I leave just enough space where I can have a brows­er open with data I might need. Finan­cial juice, MyFX­book, etc. notes on ASR/ADR/IBR that I take. Like so:

Win­dows snap per­fect­ly into place as if they are stand-alone mon­i­tors. No need to resize or anything. 

Dis­play­Fu­sion lets you auto­mat­i­cal­ly open soft­ware, charts, tabs, what­ev­er in a pre­de­ter­mined loca­tion. No need to start a soft­ware and then drag and drop it to anoth­er screen where you like it. I know first world prob­lems but we’re talk­ing about stream­lin­ing process­es here, so 🙂 

Link: Dis­play­Fu­sion — This is an affil­i­ate link if you’d like to sup­port what I do here. Every­thing I do here is for free and this does not cost you a thing to use this link.

Stream Deck (I know it’s hardware :P)

This is a Geek’s must-have lit­tle macro key­board. I have the XL ‘cause I like to show off :P. For you that have been liv­ing under a rock. This thing is cool. Basi­cal­ly a bunch of lit­tle mon­i­tors that you can press as but­tons. You can map it to what­ev­er you want. Like lit­er­al­ly ANYTHING. Back to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Let’s say I want to trade (as we are traders here after all). I press one but­ton to engage my mon­i­tors and vir­tu­al screens on those mon­i­tors like I explained above with Dis­play­Fu­sion. I press a 2nd but­ton ‘Trade Sta­tion’ and it not just turns on all soft­ware I need (ie. mul­ti­ple MT4 accounts, FX syn­er­gy, Google Dri­ve tem­plates, sheets, etc.) but puts them in the right loca­tion on my screens as well.

So basi­cal­ly I use it to switch my mon­i­tors, open soft­ware, copy paste using Cap­ture by Tech­smith for tak­ing notes on charts. 

For gam­ing I have all the but­tons from an Air­plane cock­pit con­fig­ured into this lit­tle device. Or use it as a but­ton box for sim rac­ing. Seri­ous­ly, the but­tons are unlim­it­ed. It shows me what­ev­er info I want. Can even have stock tick­ers on it. Have I men­tioned it’s a damn cool gadget? 🙂

Link: Stream Deck (or any oth­er macro key­board) — Takes you direct­ly to their website

Symless Synergy

So with the move to my new place I decid­ed to switch my trad­ing sta­tion to my lap­top. This way I have some back­up in case of an elec­tric fall­out. Also, I can use my desk­top PC for oth­er pur­pos­es with­out it tak­ing up resources for my trad­ing setup.

Since I would still like to use my fan­cy mechan­i­cal key­board and mouse I use Sym­less to have a seam­less 🙂 expe­ri­ence of using my key­board and mouse over both my lap­top and desk­top. The soft­ware can be used cross plat­form so for those that use Lin­ux or MacOS, no problem. 

EDIT: I actu­al­ly stopped using Sym­less Syn­er­gy and have not found an appro­pri­ate alter­na­tive yet. It was caus­ing some lag on my PC and if there’s some­thing I can­not tol­er­ate it’s lag 🙂 

If you have an alter­na­tive please do share it with me. The soft­ware might still work for you so that’s why I kept it in.

Link: Sym­less Syn­er­gy — Takes you direct­ly to their website

Flashback Recorder

I record my trad­ing for review that I do either the next day and/or on the week­ends. Flash­back Recorder lets me eas­i­ly record a por­tion of my screen (like for exam­ple the mid­dle part of the ultra­w­ide) and dis­re­gards the rest.

It is best to do this using a SSD dri­ve as reading/writing will be faster. I then con­vert the rather large files into small­er MP4 for­mat to save space on my back­up drive. 

If anyone’s inter­est­ed in my back­up dri­ve I can explain a bit about that as well. It is a sim­ple 2‑bay hard­drive enclo­sure with a RAID 1 con­fig­u­ra­tion (mir­rored). What­ev­er gets writ­ten to one dri­ve gets copied exact­ly to the oth­er. If one HD dies, sim­ply replace it and the data will be restored back to it. 

Link: Flash­back Recorder — Takes you direct­ly to their website

Forex Simulator

Last but not least: A must have for back and for­ward test­ing as you can sim­u­late as if things are hap­pen­ing in real life. It is anoth­er addon for MT4 and works great with all the Blahtech indi­ca­tors except for the Dai­ly Range one. I own the Blahtech Mar­ket Pro­file and Sup­ply and Demand as well as the Dai­ly Range one and it works seam­less­ly with all except the lat­ter. This is some­thing I could poten­tial­ly take up with Blahtech but I have not done so at this time. 

I use it to try out trad­ing ideas, solid­i­fy what I already know… basi­cal­ly you get to trade even when mar­kets are closed. It’s my new ‘game’ that I play on the week­ends. In my opin­ion a must have for any trader. 

If you want me to go fur­ther in-depth into any of these just let me know. Per­haps I can write a more ded­i­cat­ed arti­cle on it at some point. Don’t hes­i­tate to ask me any ques­tions or issues you run into. I’ll do my best to answer any you might have. 

Forex Sim­u­la­tor —  — Take you direct­ly to their website