Trade at the exchange on the Internet

What is a 'Trading Platform'

A trading platform is a software through which investors and traders can open, close, and manage market positions through a financial intermediary. Online trading platforms are frequently offered by brokers either for free or at a discount rate in exchange for maintaining a funded account and/or making a specified number of trades per month.

BREAKING DOWN 'Trading Platform'

A trading platform is the software that allows investors and traders to place trades and monitor accounts through financial intermediaries. Often times, trading platforms will come bundled with other features, such as real-time quotes, charting tools, news feeds, and even premium research. Platforms may also be specifically tailored to specific markets, such as stocks, currencies, options, or futures markets.

When deciding between trading platforms, traders and investors should consider both the fees involved and features available. Day traders and other short-term traders may require features like Level 2 quotes and market maker depth charts to assist in decision-making, while options traders may need tools that are specifically designed to visualize options strategies. Lower fees are always preferable, but there may be a trade off to consider.

Some trading platforms may be agnostic to a specific intermediary or broker, while other trading platforms are only available when working with a particular intermediary or broker. As a result, investors should also consider the reputation of the intermediary or broker before committing to a specific trading platform to execute trades and manage their accounts.

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Finally, trading platforms may have specific requirements to qualify to use them. For example, day trading platforms may require that traders have at least $25,000 in equity in their accounts and be approved for margin trading, while options platforms may require approval to trade various types of options before being able to use the trading platform.

Popular Trading Platforms

There are hundreds - if not thousands - of different trading platforms, including these popular options:

• Interactive Brokers - Interactive Brokers is the most popular trading platform for professionals with low fees and access to markets around the world.
• TradeStation - TradeStation is a popular trading platform for algorithmic traders that prefer to execute trading strategies using automated scripts developed with Easy Language.
• TDAmeritrade - TDAmeritrade is a popular broker for both traders and investors, especially following its acqusition of ThinkorSwim and the development of the Trade Architect platforms.

The most popular platform for many foreign exchange (forex) market participants is MetaTrader, which is a trading platform that interfaces with many different brokers. Its MQL scripting language has become a popular tool for those looking to automate trading in currencies.

Exchange trade (how to trade at the exchange)

Exchange trade, trading – process of transactions of sale and purchase of financial instruments at the organized auction (exchange). The individual, getting access to the exchange through the broker, can trade in shares, bonds, currency, futures, options and other tools.

For trade at the exchange the natural person needs several components:

- The opened brokerage account at one of brokers or in the bank having the broker license. The Financial One log regularly publishes the rating of brokers who give access to two main trading floors of Russia – the Moscow Exchange and Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange.

- The trade terminal (the program for trading) via which the natural person will independently make transactions, or the personal manager who will make transactions on the brokerage account of the client by means of voice messages of last. Today it is possible to state that voice trading practically died, having given way to independent trade via exchange terminals. As a rule they are divided into several types: independent development (QUIK, MetaTrader, "Source", Yango, "Thesis", etc.) and internal development of brokers (FinamTrade from the FINAM company, application "My broker" from BKS, SmartX from the ITinvest company and etc.).

WHAT IS NECESSARY THAT IT IS (SUCCESSFULLY PROFITABLE) TO TRADE AT THE EXCHANGE?

Successful trade at the exchange requires existence of three key factors which cannot exist the friend without friend:

- Accurately formalized trade system. It is the set of rules on which the trader makes the decision on an input and an output from a line item. They can be formulated both on the basis of graphic models (patterns), and on the basis of signals of different technical indicators which are built in exchange terminals.

- Manya-management, or risk management. It rules of control of equity. In other words, how many people are ready to be lost in % of own deposit in one transaction.

- Correctly built psychology of exchange trade. The correct relation to trading and the correct psychological spirit retain the person from rash and not system transactions and also rollings in a tilt status when to the trader becomes all the same how many he will lose – if only his need for transactions was satisfied (not very well – profitable or unprofitable). The status of the tilt arises against the background of desire of the trader to win back the previous losses. It carries to the fact that it breaks own trade system and governed risk management therefore a deposit is lost or the essential loss appears. On the secret statistics confirmed, in particular, with the competition "The Best Private Investor" up to 80-90% of private traders lose money at the exchange.