Hardware setup for Daytrading. Looking for recommendations

[Lenny 2]

Dear BBT community,

Hope you guys can help me out. I am looking for a good solution and I could use some help from all the experience over here.

I am getting deeper and deeper in daytrading. And I feel that is time to invest in good hardware, and a good setup.

So far have been trading so far on my Macbook from 2011 without additional screen. I am using the software “Parallells Desktop”. It works, but it is pretty slow to get it all started up (5 min), the parellels software takes a lot of memory from my laptop as well.  But perhaps these are issues because my Macbook is old (from 2011). However, in general I prefer to use a Macbook for all the non-trading activities. I am open for a regular laptop though.

I prefer a laptop over a desktop, because i am always moving a lot, and preferable I am also looking to travel in the future, so I like to stay mobile with my trading setup.

1. So my first question would be, what your guys experience, or advise is, with regard to choosing a Macbook or not, for somebody that wants to gets more serious in to daytrading.

2. My second question would be, in general, what kind of laptop you guys would recommend, that works very well for daytrading.

3. Third, I was curious to know, what other hardware you guys would recommend me to buy, or to consider. Do you use certain keyboards, or mouses or certain screens?

Many thanks in advance,
 

Lenny
    

[Justin 264]

12 hours ago, peterB said:

Dell XPS is great Windows laptop if it is not too expensive for you.

This is the answer. The new XPS 13 just came out too.

[jonosg 11]

I was using an Old 2012 MacMini as a backup  PC for a while. I found using bootcamp and booting windows 10 from its own partition gave much better performance  than running windows from any flavour of virtual machine in OSX (If you have the diskspace.)

Without a budget its difficult to give advice, but the major limiting factors  / compromise with any laptop are upgrading and multi monitor support (unless you have unlimited $  (for a super dooper pooper scooper Alienware / Razor Blade 17" GTX2080, ). if you can use your old macbook whilst travelling you can pick up a good desktop and a couple of monitors for 1/3 the price of a decent laptop. Unless you're absolutely sure of the monitor setup you want I wouldn't go dropping $2K+ on a laptop.

The XPS is good, another option is a Surface Book 2 (MSFT had a 30% discount plus free docking station recently, but it is a little out of date so I wouldn't pay full price for one). If you want to use more than 1 external monitor you will need to buy a docking station for most laptops, they are an additional $200 to $400.

 

Edited April 15, 2020 by jonosg

[Lenny 2]

Thank all of you, for your answers, very helpful.

To return to the question deciding a Macbook or a Windows laptop. 

Will the trading software work as fine as well on the Macbook, or will the use of bootcamp, booting Windows from it's own partition, parellels, always have limitations with regard to speed etc. compared with a Windows laptop.

Or will a modern Macbook will work just as fine on all aspects as a Windows laptop with regards to using the trading software? 

This because, only if the trading software will work just as fast, and comfortable on a Macbook as on a Windows laptop, I would prefer the Macbook because of my non-trading activities. 

For now I have the luxury position, to be able to spend 1500-2k$ on a laptop

[jonosg 11]

Bootcamp is a Mac OSX Boot program - what it does is partitions the physical SSD/HDD allowing  windows  to run from what is effectively a separate HDD without loading OSX then parallels then windows as a virtual machine. The Macbook is effectively a windows machine. When you switch the machine on you can select windows boot or OSX boot but not both simultaneously. Limitations are additional disk space  (although it's minimal in some ways as you still need diskspace for parallels and windows) plus you can't run OSX or its apps whilst booted in windows. If you buy a high end Macbook Pro with plenty of RAM and a big SSD you should have no issue running parallels / windows. Older machines with limited RAM bootcamp is the way to go. IMHO. 

Main thing with trading software is internet connection speed not raw processing or graphics power (unless you want to mine bitcoins). DAS barely registers on Windows task Manager CPU and Memory Load even with 30 charts open - its all windows and chrome processes.

Edited April 17, 2020 by jonosg