wpicotte

I imagine feature needs are tied to level of experience. As you become more experience, my hunch is that the scope of features narrows down quite a bit. Speaking for myself, I'm extremely new to trading and on the steep learning curve it presents. Hence, my journal (currently a OneNote file) is a moving target. I include a brief summary of my day, noting what I messed up, did correctly (mostly the former), and learned. I include screenshots of my P&L and Trade Log, and a section for each trade with screenshots of relevant 1-min and 5-min time periods, and trade summaries. Lastly, in addition to the OneNote file, I drop my account summary into an Excel file. The intent here is simply to aggregate profit / loss data over time. I summarize this in a pivot table and eventually will represent this graphically. I want to see trends in the right direction -- more profit, less loss. I don't use this to analyze minutia of daily trading decisions. Hope this is helpful. Big project you're considering. Keep us in the loop! Wesley

Thanks Robert - that post is super helpful.

This is a very helpful post. Thanks.

All recommendations I see can be summarized as "buy a gaming PC". Basically, a solid state drive, a motherboard that supports accelerated graphics and multiple monitors, and 16GB of RAM minimum. There are trading-specific PCs available at a premium that are also overkill. If you're going for a desktop PC, SSDs are faster and more durable than a spinning disk. The motherboard needs have the video card ports to support however many monitors you have / want. RAM is RAM -- based on my research, 16GB is plenty assuming an SSD and decent motherboard. If you want a laptop, more expensive but likely what I'll opt for if / when I ditch my MBP, finding sufficient RAM and SSDs are no problem, but a motherboard becomes the constraint. You likely wind up using inline video cards on a per-monitor basis. I haven't dug into the particulars of this set-up, but it employs a USB hub. The monitors go from HDMI (most likely) to USB and include the inline vid cards, and then into the hub. This is in turn the line to the PC. There are a YT vids and blog write-ups ad nauseam that detail these details. And finally, you could build your own. I explored this rabbit hole for a half hour the other night -- you commit less cash but no the write-ups that I read were so candid to mention (1) loading the OS and getting all components to play nice with it is a pain, (2) the when you build vs. buy you have get warranty / retail support and (3) what you save in cash is spent in time. That's all I know for now. Hanging onto my MBP until I prove an ability to day-trading. So far...not so much, but there's always tomorrow.

I've now installed all three options for using DAS on a Mac (Macbook Pro) -- VMWare Fusion, Parallels, and CrossOver. The virtual machine option is a non-starter, at least on my laptop. Both programs present different issues and are resource-heavy. CrossOver seems to be the "lightest" option, inasmuch as it isn't hosting a separate, beastly operating system, partitioning the system memory in the process. I agree with the point of view that the right set-up uses a PC. Trading risks are plenty -- there's no rationale for adding to them by running a critical application like DAS in a scenario where is may crash (as I've already experienced). If this happens with positions open, ouch. I'm purchasing CrossOver and will use this for the duration of the Simulator subscription. Should things prove out for me and I move forward to trading non-play money, I'll invest in a gaming PC, which'll have an added option of using more than 2 secondary monitors (a limitation of my MBP).

Thanks for the responses. Agreed about the official version on Windows. I've installed Windows 10 on VMWare's Fusion. So far, not impressed with the performance, but I haven't tweaked any allocations yet. It seems to struggle with graphics. Will see what happens tomorrow when trading is live. If this doesn't work, I'll give Parallels a shot. A review I read comparing the two stated that Parallels is more graphics-intensive, and VMWare is more processor-intensive. For my machine (mid-2012 MBP), it may make sense to lean on the processor vs. the graphics card, which gets the fans to spin up when running all monitors.

Curious to know if others here are running DAS Trader on a Mac. I am (Macbook Pro), and currently using a trial copy of CrossOver. DAS crashed last Friday -- it could be disastrous if this happens with a position open, so I'm not happy about it. In the aftermath I discovered that DAS won't support issues related to CrossOver. Their customer support was great, but in trying to understand the crash, they'd go only so far. Another issue I've encountered is an inability to span the main DAS window across monitors (this is possible with native Mac apps, and DAS states that this is a capability on PCs). The consequence is that the hotkey that focuses a montage associated to a chart works only when in my main DAS window, which is on my primary monitor. It will not function on secondary monitors, where i need to place DAS charts, montages, etc. that have been popped-out of the main window. While in this early phase with DAS, and still in the CrossOver trial period, it makes sense to also test a virtual machine. VMWare's Fusion gets high marks and has a 30-day trial, but I need to purchase Windows OS, which is available for $110 (or less on 3rd party sites where I won't use my CC). Considering this cost, thought I'd ask for feedback from others here who use DAS on a Mac with a virtual machine. If you're out there, please let me know if you've encountered any issues worth sharing.

My main window is configured differently, but I added a new montage, market viewer and chart to test this out. With the new chart active, the new montage is made active by the hotkey. If afterwards I select a pre-existing chart that's associated to the original montage, the new montage is again selected by the the hotkey. If I use the hotkey again, the original montage is selected. As I continue using the hotkey, DAS cycles through the montage windows on my secondary monitors. Once I've gotten to the last one (of five), the hotkey stops working (i.e. it no longer cycles through open montage windows). So, in short, the hotkey doesn't function as expected (on Mac OS, at least).

Hi Robert -- my config is the same as yours ('switch symbol by select' and 'left click link to montage' are both selected) and indeed when I click a symbol in the market viewer, the montage associated to it becomes active. This seems to be the fastest way after a hotkey to ensure trading commands are applied to the correct stock, just have to become accustomed to the process.

That's my current configuration, too, and it functions as you've described. I spoke with DAS support but they do not support DAS on CrossOver, so no luck there. The limitation seems to be that the main DAS window will not expand across monitors (at least, not on Mac, don't know about PC). Hence, as you've pointed out, I'm using pop-up windows and this particular hotkey will not apply to them.

This isn't a tip or trick, but a question about a hotkey issue I'm experiencing. I reconfigured the 'select montage' hotkey included in Andrew's file because I'm on a Mac, and the keyboard does not include an 'end' key. I've tried three configurations - the first was "\", the second "shift+\", and third the "home" button. Regardless of configuration, the hotkey works in the main DAS window but not in additional windows created for my secondary monitors. In those, if I have a chart in focus and hit the montage hotkey, nothing happens. At first, I thought this was a configuration problem, which is why I changed them up, but have since realized that unless I'm in the main window, the hotkey simply doesn't work. Any pointers here? Thanks - Wesley

Nice. Thanks for passing this along.

Greetings all - my name is Wesley (Wesley P in chat) and I'm as new to day trading as can be. I'm not even sure of the initial spark that led me to investigate day trading in the first place, but somehow I found myself down the rabbit hole. Over a couple of weeks, I spent hours on YouTube watching vids about a multitude of trading aspects, and pretty quickly the need for some kind of trading education became evident. One way or another I discovered Andrew's book and purchased it from among a handful I reviewed due to what I perceived to be plain-spoken candor about the risks and rewards of day trading. I also liked his bare-bones approach to laying out day trading. I completed the book over the holidays and tomorrow my first week of the 3-month sim program will conclude. I have no prior market experience. I'm self-employed for the past five years after 15 years working for Web agencies. I do pretty OK (knock on wood) but as those of you here who are self-employed know, killing what you eat day-in day-out is a grind and it doesn't take much to upset your financial equilibrium. I still answer to clients, too, despite being an independent, and I guess that's just not quite good enough. I've been on the hunt for a couple years for something with greater autonomy, and this is one among several aspects of day trading that is very compelling. Truly, with day trading you hold your fate in your hands, and that is awesome. It's all play money for me right now, and drink after drink from the firehose, and I'm glad to be here. Cheers, Wesley