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Does anyone on the system use Dual Screens? (eg on a desktop). Any advice whether special video cards are needed etc would be useful. I've never seen such discussed but imagine there are some members who have quite a complex set up!
I happen to have noticed on ebay if you type in (today) traders PC it comes up with systems which can cope with up to 6 screens plus the usual claims of 'less slippage' etc...................
Any good quality GPU (graphics card) for pc (ones that cost between £50-100) would give you multiple monitor support. Gaming ones are even better. but we don't need extreme high end GPU's, just the mid range are ok. Nvidia are great but AMD are good too (I use the later) Usualy it will give you a display port and DVI port support. I like display port ones. But I don't use multiple monitors for trading, I use it because I answer emails and chat while I trade. I have 3 monitors up and that's more than I need, I'm thinking of reducing to 2 monitors. " monitors is great for productivity. for those who want to use two screens on laptops , most laptops these days have an extra vga port/some even dvi or DP these days, that can be used to extend display I do this when I'm on my trips abroad... but really, trading on one laptop sitting somewhere comfortable beats everything.... the rest is up to you.. "the need to know more" the paradox will keep you on the wrong side of things forever... Less is More. .. indeed....
Thanks Immy, It was really just for the reason you say, the ability to trade and to be doing other work simultaneously..........
I thought the topic worthy of discussion, I've never really seen anything written on the forum or on other discussion sites either...........
These modern CPUs preferably equivalent to dual core are quite man enough for trading, the delays are often due to inadequate RAM (4gb is recommendable) and internet connections (I'll get fibre optic one day into house).......
Even a 2mb connection is enough to get good data feed for MT4, just make sure "ping" is acceptable (low or no noise in the line if using ADSL) the rest is ok. MT4 is really a primitive software. it does not require much resources given the fact that modern computers are becoming better and better a bit like Moty's trading.
What is the Secret of Successful Trading?
The Consistent Pursuit of DS1
The thing that makes me money in trading is when I "Objectively Follow my Trading Plan".
I understand that I can't catch all the moves or all the signals but my objective is to catch THE VALID SIGNALS & ONLY the Valid Signals.
haha, when you have kids in the house downloading video and music stuff simultaneously it does probably add to latency compared with average pings on an overloaded wifi setup...........
only an issue really on m1 trading, I think not only is mt4 primitive, but some brokers are intentionally imposing some delays which may or may not disadvantage us. I know this because 2 or 3 years ago we were making money on a particular robot which has ceased to be so effective (million dollar pips) .......
With aims, the bigger the TF the less it matters..............
PS, In some of the seminars by Bill Williams which are posted on youtube he talks about phoning your broker. Those were the days before PCs with www connectivity, and where it was done on daily time charts and flawless execution didn't mean seconds were critical
I wish more people would come on here to share something on their journals
[center]IF YOU CANT EXPLAIN IT SIMPLY YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND IT WELL ENOUGH (Einstein)
1% daily gain, compounded for 250 trading days, (approximately one year) would produce 1103% account growth[/center]
"Markets reflect the positioning of the sum total of investors – they are not driven by something an individual investor knows that the rest of us don’t, but they do to an extent reflect what investors think other investors are thinking and so can diverge in the shorter term from the economic fundamentals."
I like the idea of two screens; laptop with external monitor.
most of the time I find one screen is enough.
I also have second laptop with same settings in case of emergency.
Hill wrote:I like the idea of two screens; laptop with external monitor.
most of the time I find one screen is enough.
I also have second laptop with same settings in case of emergency.
"Emergency" provisions
The technical things that do go wrong include
1) power failure
2) internet outage
3) computer hardware or software failure
My contingency is iphone with metatrader app, also have a non mt4 broker app, and a second laptop.
Useful to have this discussion!
I wish more people would come on here to share something on their journals
[center]IF YOU CANT EXPLAIN IT SIMPLY YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND IT WELL ENOUGH (Einstein)
1% daily gain, compounded for 250 trading days, (approximately one year) would produce 1103% account growth[/center]
"Markets reflect the positioning of the sum total of investors – they are not driven by something an individual investor knows that the rest of us don’t, but they do to an extent reflect what investors think other investors are thinking and so can diverge in the shorter term from the economic fundamentals."
Hill wrote:I like the idea of two screens; laptop with external monitor.
most of the time I find one screen is enough.
I also have second laptop with same settings in case of emergency.
Yes, that seems to work for me. However more recently I've been using a Dell XPS Ultrabook 13 inches SSD gives me at least 6 hrs of trading time sitting without a plugged cable. when I needed a second monitor like you i now simply carry another small laptop or sometimes I'd just use my nexus 7 to run skype or chatzy chat on it thats all. I have the google speech to text on it does most of the job hence very long sentences in my chatzy or skype chats haha
Ray: good idea, always good to have backup. My backup internet plan is exactly that, mobile hotspot and I have two sources one from my mobile other from wifes' I also have a UPS so incase of power down I can still run my pc, but I have laptops always on charge anyway so that should cover all bases.
What is the Secret of Successful Trading?
The Consistent Pursuit of DS1
The thing that makes me money in trading is when I "Objectively Follow my Trading Plan".
I understand that I can't catch all the moves or all the signals but my objective is to catch THE VALID SIGNALS & ONLY the Valid Signals.
Just for the record I find my laptop, running with 4GB Ram, has a t9400 Intel Core2 duo processor (it's 3 or 4 years old now), running 2.53GHz. According to the internet this is still quite a good chip, admittedly newer Intel and AMD cpus are rather better, but what I have got is not yet an arthritic dinosaur. The laptop is HP Elitebook. Actually it's a good laptop, I've tried a few in my time, and it seems robust and durable and better than the stuff the high street stores usually sell.
I still find some of the charts slow to load, and have reduced the number of bars in the tools area of MT4 to minimum. Some indicators probably draw more power than others due to complex sums, I would have to admit gator and ao and fractals/aims boxes are among the more simple ones, and the main ones to never delete....................
I wish more people would come on here to share something on their journals
[center]IF YOU CANT EXPLAIN IT SIMPLY YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND IT WELL ENOUGH (Einstein)
1% daily gain, compounded for 250 trading days, (approximately one year) would produce 1103% account growth[/center]
"Markets reflect the positioning of the sum total of investors – they are not driven by something an individual investor knows that the rest of us don’t, but they do to an extent reflect what investors think other investors are thinking and so can diverge in the shorter term from the economic fundamentals."
Happy New Year mate. What HDD are you running on laptop ? Try and change your drive to SSD which is bit costly compare to normal SATA drive but it will definitely boost performance and will make your old laptop working like ferari.
Regards,
Sam
Thanks Sam, this one is bound to be a SATA drive, and I've just been reading that the solid state ones dont get affected same by fragmentation and it is something I should look at. Sounds like the prices are coming down all the time too.
I wish more people would come on here to share something on their journals
[center]IF YOU CANT EXPLAIN IT SIMPLY YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND IT WELL ENOUGH (Einstein)
1% daily gain, compounded for 250 trading days, (approximately one year) would produce 1103% account growth[/center]
"Markets reflect the positioning of the sum total of investors – they are not driven by something an individual investor knows that the rest of us don’t, but they do to an extent reflect what investors think other investors are thinking and so can diverge in the shorter term from the economic fundamentals."
Just some personal opinions.. metatrader doesn't require that much performance power and if Windows runs smoothly mt should also. However cheap VPS servers have low performing hardware and with those machines you could have trouble running 2-3 simultaneous metatrader instances.
For displays I have just one laptop and two of these displays: http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd015702. Those displays are USB displays and doesn't require external power supply (=uses power from USB port). Cheap, flat and easy to use. Contrast and color performance is quite crappy but still ok for occational secondary display usage. I use those whenever needed more screen space.
For power failures... those happens few times in a year. My laptop has ~6 hours of lifetime. iPad with 3G/4G has even more. So on power failure problems I just share mobile internet connection via iPad and continue using laptop.
Thanks Tomi
Although everyone says MT4 doesn't need a lot of performance power, I do get frequent times when toggling from one chart tab to the next takes a lot longer than I would hope. Perhaps it is something to do with disk fragmentation (with Sam rightly saying solid state architecture would be faster). I will experiment with reducing the history. I am of the habit of having 6 or 7 charts and 2 brokers (and today I'm noticing FXCM - the people who have had regulators crawling all over them - are definitely faster moving their prices than ICM !!!)
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50 pips today, on a Dax short. Why oh Why did I get out just before it fell another 50 ???????? Only because it levelled out and I bottled it........ And I mustn't get afraid of the first "fruit" signal as an exit sign unless there's a wide angle between price line and alligator
anyway 67 pips up on the year so far, giving more than 10% return, so trying to keep true to the principles.
I wish more people would come on here to share something on their journals
[center]IF YOU CANT EXPLAIN IT SIMPLY YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND IT WELL ENOUGH (Einstein)
1% daily gain, compounded for 250 trading days, (approximately one year) would produce 1103% account growth[/center]
"Markets reflect the positioning of the sum total of investors – they are not driven by something an individual investor knows that the rest of us don’t, but they do to an extent reflect what investors think other investors are thinking and so can diverge in the shorter term from the economic fundamentals."
wiseambitions wrote:Thanks Tomi
Although everyone says MT4 doesn't need a lot of performance power, I do get frequent times when toggling from one chart tab to the next takes a lot longer than I would hope. Perhaps it is something to do with disk fragmentation (with Sam rightly saying solid state architecture would be faster).
Sure thing mt sometimes lag, as will Windows also. But in general my feeling is that mt doesn't need much. Of course it depends on what stuff is on the charts. I have just AIMS indis and some of my own coded stuff that doesn't need computing power.
For harddisk fragmentation... I have SSD drive. Definitely would not use anything else. For desktops I have used for years two softwares: CCleaner and Defraggler. Both from the same company and they have free versions. I have paid the licenses as a support for them. I run those for all my machines weekly. Done like that for years and all the machines just keeps on rocking. Of course I don't run defraggler for SSD drives as there's no need.
Anyway, if Windows or mt lags from whatever reasons and cleaning and defragmenting doesn't help, then updating HW is a good idea!
