Today, the internet has made it possible for anyone who wants to be a trader to follow their dreams and see if they have what it takes to beat the market. But if you want to cut it with the big boys and girls, then you’ll need to ensure you’re making your decisions based on evidence and research rather than just emotions and the instruments you like. That means gathering data, conducting analysis, and identifying trends that allow you to devise strategies.
In the past, traders did that with an expensive subscription to a Bloomberg Terminal. These machines were originally developed by Michael Bloomberg, with the first ones sold in 1982. In a time before the internet, these terminals provided news, data, and charting tools that were impossible to get elsewhere, but they came at a cost. Today, a Bloomberg Terminal will set you back almost $30,000 a year, a hefty sum that most retail traders wouldn’t be able to afford as they find their feet.
Thankfully, you can get many of the tools available in a Bloomberg Terminal elsewhere for much less. Here, we take a look at the tools available to modern traders.
MetaTrader 5
Most online trading services and exchanges provide their own interface for you to research and execute trades, but the most advanced traders often use a third-party tool to help them. MetaTrader is the most popular of these, thanks to its industry-leading tools, access to news resources, and other vital information.
There have been several iterations of the system, the most recent being version five. To use it, traders connect their MetaTrader 5 software to an account with a trading service like Equiti and enjoy the benefits of both in a single interface. From here, traders can monitor news events, instantly identify sentiment, and use the various tools and datasets to perform technical analysis.
Finviz
While MetaTrader 5 comes packed with many tools and features for researching and conducting analysis, Finviz provides you with even more data. Right from its homepage, you can see just how much data is available, with charts of all kinds on show.
It shows the biggest movers in major indices and lists companies that have had major market-moving news released within the last few hours. You can also immediately find signals like instruments that are being overbought, oversold, have seen unusual trading volumes, new highs and lows, and even where insider trading has been suspected.
What’s even better is that much of this data is available for free, though you can subscribe to get faster updates and access to even more information.
Finviz also allows you to backtest your strategies, a process that involves trialling trades on historical data to see whether they would have worked in the past. While this isn’t a guarantee of future success, it is a good way to try out new strategies before putting them to work on a live trading account.
Social Media
While you shouldn’t be taking trading advice from random strangers on the internet, social media can be an incredibly useful tool for traders. It’s a good way to quickly spot emerging trends in sentiment towards a company, currency, or commodity, see what others are thinking, and whether there is a herd mentality that could be exploited.
There are also communities of traders on sites like Reddit where you can learn from others, share ideas, and compare your results. Of course, you should only ever act on any of these ideas after conducting your own research and analysis, but it can be an excellent place to get inspiration and mix with like-minded people.
