Gain Market-Beating Trade Timing Through Software

The average home computer today is millions of times more powerful than the room-sized behemoths of the 1950s. Computing power continues to increase – and computers become more and more affordable every year. This has led to computers being nearly omnipresent in homes and businesses; and of course, computers have completely changed the way that many industries conduct business – and others have been decimated by new technology. There is one economic sector which is still evolving as a result of increasing computing power, a change which has been underway for over a decade now.

That industry in the midst of a transformation is the stock trading and commodities trading industry. Stock trading, especially day trading, involves trying to beat the market on trade timing. The person who moves first on a trade tends to make the most money.

Day trading is part and parcel for the stock brokerage career, and day traders at big financial firms do trade swings with leverages of 20:1 or more (leverage is taking out a short term loan to buy shares, hoping that the profit on selling them will pay off the loan and its fees).

Since leverage is one of the causes of the woeful state of the world economy at present, leverage has earned a reputation as being an extremely dangerous thing. Think of leverage as a tool; when used responsibly, it can be very helpful – but used improperly, it can cause serious damage. It all depends how the tool is used. Like a chainsaw, leverage is not inherently dangerous.

However, enough traders have made careless mistakes with leveraged trades to give day trading the same kind of dangerous reputation. While there are other ways to make profitable stock trades like the buy and hold strategy used by Warren Buffett, this is not a style which is well suited to every trader. Making profitable trades on this model means having an in depth knowledge of how the market works and of the long term prospects for the companies whose stock is being traded.