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Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: id who wrote (1942)	7/18/1999 9:53:00 AM
From: Dan Clark	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

id, I'm not aware of Fido's new ActiveTrader. If it's browser based, I'm not sure if there is any advantage over ETrade or Datek. Regarding the other issues... Commissions - The last time I used Fido, their best commissions were $15 for market orders, $20 for limit orders. CyberX is $15 for ALL orders. Assuming my numbers are correct, Fido is MORE expensive. Monthly cost QCharts - Quote.com's QCharts is $80 Standard, $100 Premium (with news and other stuff). I have Premium, but am considering cutting back to Standard. I believe that they are working on a real-time, streaming news feed for QCharts. So I'm holding off going back to Standard for a little while. Monthly cost CyberX - It's very inexpensive, like... FREE! Exchange Fees/Level II - You will need to pay exchange fees. These go to the exchanges, not to Quote.com. For all stock exchanges including Nasdaq Level I, the cost is about $10/month. Nasdaq Level II is optional; it costs an additional $46 per month (outrageously high). QCharts Level II - There is no extra cost for Level II in QCharts. But, you do need to pay the exchange fee for it. Note that the ISLD book is free in QCharts and has no exchange fee. Comm Requirements - I have an ISDN line, primarily because I have four computers networked together (including my wife's computer and my portable). With an ISDN router, they are all on-line simultaneously. I only use one primary computer and my portable for trading. If you have a clean modem line with a $56K modem, you would do fine with CyberX and QCharts. Your initial software startup will be a little slower. After that, it should be fine. OE Software installation - CyberX and QCharts are one-step installations. Two monitors, two computers, etc. - I use my portable to monitor an MIRC chat group session. Other than that, I use a single computer with a 19" screen. It gets crowded with QCharts, CyberX, a browser window with Briefing.com and StockScanner (my scanning app) running simultaneously. But, it's doable. I just <alt> <tab> a lot. I'm planning on a second monitor, but for now my setup works. Bottom line - Putting the pieces together isn't particularly difficult. Cost for Standard QCharts, CyberX and exchange fees is about $90/month plus $15 per trade. Add $46 for LII exchange fees. Good trading and regards, Dan.

To: id who wrote (1942)	7/18/1999 10:34:00 AM
From: TraderAlan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18137

id, If you want to trade intraday, you have no choice but to pay the money. Position traders can get away with a lot less. But anything shorter and you can't make reasoned decisions without following the intraday swing of the market using most of this data. You can live without Level II if you don't use ECN executions but they will crush you if you don't know where ISLD size is waiting to take the other side of your position. BTW real time ISLD book is free to anyone with the java viewer available on the web. I use eSignal which CyberX is now featuring for $59/mon in their partnership. Alan

To: id who wrote (1942)	7/24/1999 8:45:00 PM
From: MIKE REDDERT	Respond to of 18137

Unfortunately. Fidelity's Active Trader is a compilation of various and common web based resources, set up to look like a real time trading platform... in addition, it's browser based (slow). Bottom line... it's useless for the serious trader. Having made several suggestions to Fidelity over the past couple of years (even pointing them to example sites like MB Trading), I am a little disappointed that they wasted their time on this. Of course, I say this as a swing- daytrader. Perhaps there will be those, who find it useful. Mike