Many Traders I speak with will ask me what platform I use for my personal trading, naturally I use several platforms and I am always trying and testing new platforms. But here is 10 reasons why I like to use TradeStation.
1. Direct Access – With TradeStation your orders are sent directly to the exchange. They do not have a market maker fill your order.
2. Charting – I can customize my charts in TradeStation to make them look exactly how I want.
3. Great Data – Easily upgraded and downgraded if my trading needs change my data plan can change effortlessly. With 6 months of live tick-by-tick data and up to 18 years of one minute historical data.
4. Trade Execution – The matrix trading screen makes it easy to see the current bids and offers. You can easily place trades and edit your orders directly from the matrix screen.
5. Back Testing – From Walk Forward Optimizer to Portfolio Maestro, you can back test up to the minute when you would have been most profitable with your trades.
6. Radar Screen – I can track up to 1,000 symbols on my radar screen and TradeStation is one of the few platforms that offer full support for custom indicators, naturally our Swing Trading Software works incredibly well with it, this ensures I never miss an opportunity.
7. Stock Scanner – Everyday I can search for stocks using all different criteria including entry signals generated by our Swing Trading Software. I also search for gaps in the market to play some of my gap moves.
8. Customer Service – You have a one-on-one relationship with an Account Executive that knows your name and your account. If I have any issues I can call someone who at least knows a little about me and my activity.
9. Easy Language – Being an Easy Language specialist coding in TradeStation is my preferred way of testing new ideas and indicators. All of our products and ideas are developed in TradeStation and then ported to our other preferred platforms.
10. Market Depth – Easily see who’s making the market on the stocks I am trading.
If you’re new to TradeStation or just getting started, I have attached several links below to really help you get the best out of the TradeStation Platform.
TradeStation Commission Structure
You can choose between TradeStation’s per-share or flat-fee commission plans.
Per Share Commissions: Designed for a trader whose average trade is 800 contracts or less. They charge $.01 per share your first 500 shares. $500 shares will cost $5.00 dollars to trade. After 500 shares, the commission drops to $.006 per share. This means your next 500 shares will only cost $3.00 dollars.
Flat Fee Commissions: Designed for a trader that trades a large volume of contracts with each trade. They start everyone at $6.99 per month. After their first month at $6.99 per trade, they look at their previous month’s trading history to see what price target they fall into for the current month’s commission.
Examples of Flat Fee Commissions
1-9 trades: $9.99 per trade
10-29 trades: $7.99 per trade
30+ trades: $6.99 per trade
All information on this page is considered to be correct at the time of writing, please speak to a TradeStation representative if you have any questions about trading with TradeStation.
Please also check out our Tradestation Indicators.
