Trader’s Narrative

I’m really interested to hear from other traders what their ideal trading front end would be. You can be general or specific in your comments. I suppose stability is a must since you don’t it crashing right before you enter a position, or after you’re in one.

What about flexibility? ease of use? How many spend hours and hours poring over manuals? what about price? how big a factor is that? how many actually use the complex spread or multi-legging functionalities some front ends have? what about platforms (windows, mac, linux)?

I was reading an old article from SFO magazine about this topic. Here’s an excerpt:

But in speaking with almost a dozen traders and instructors, a number of similar ideas emerge when examining the nuts and bolts of electronic trading – especially when it comes to order entry. The most common advice given is to find a setup that is fast, reliable and comfortable for your trading needs. That can mean offering automated functions that allow for many differing types of trades and spreads with one click. It also means that order-entry systems are often just one part of an entire package or trading platform.

So what would make your ideal trading front end?