YOUR SHARE TRADING ACCOUNT CAN BE SLAUGHTER BY A BAD EXECUTION PLATFORM

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was all about faster executions. A share trading trader who had an execution platform that was faster than the others had an edge. Online web-based share trading brokers caught on and started out offering "60 second guarantees" on share trading fills. Those of us that were using direct access laughed in their face. Sixty seconds might as well have been a week. Today, nearly every broker has adapted and everybody has lightning fast executions. So what platforms have the edge in share trading?

Most of the mistakes share trading traders make are emotional. I've watched share-trading traders get flustered, especially in futures share trading, and make mistakes with their orders. They go long 5 contracts of the mini-sized Dow, and then make an error in trying to place their stop that ends up liquidating their position. Other times they put a share trading target in place and end up doubling up on their position due to a mechanical error. Or, worse, they don't feel like going through the entire process of placing a stop, then placing a share trading target, and then remembering to cancel the remaining open order once either the stop or the target is hit--so they don't place a stop or a target. These are the shares trading traders who "rely on their judgment while in a trade" and create great opportunities for the rest of us when they inevitably freak out. Manual order submission and share trading management is a tedious, error prone process. Coupled with heightened emotions, it is a recipe for trader blowout. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but that day is always lurking on the horizon.

In addition, some share trading traders simply are not computer savvy. They are not comfortable on computers, and it is easy for them to fumble an order. The best computer users are kids and it's because they have grown up playing video games on their PCs. Some share trading traders I know have deliberately learned to play "one person shooter" games on their PCs in order to improve their speed on the keyboard. The most popular of these is called "Call of Duty." This game places you in various battles during World War II, and it is literally act fast or die--kind of like trading. By the time a person gets through this adventure, their eye-hand-mouse-keyboard coordination will have improved exponentially. This game is available at stores like Best Buy for $30.

Share trading execution software today has evolved to help traders protect themselves from . . . themselves. Think of a typical share trade. Let's say I go long 10 contracts of the mini-sized Dow futures at 10814. I place a 20 point stop, and I want to exit half my position on a 10 point move to 10824, and for the rest of my share trading position I will trail my stop--every time the Dow moves 10 points, I will move my stop up 10 points. This requires active trade management, with the pressing of a lot of keys and many mouse clicks. One mistake and I can turn this winning trade into a loser.

What if, each time I bought the mini-sized Dow, my share trading execution platform new I would be using a 20 point stop and a 10 point target on the first half of my position? If it knew that, then it could place the orders for me automatically, and I wouldn't have to do a thing. What if it also knew that when my first target was hit, I wanted to bring my stop up to breakeven? And it also new to change the number of contracts in my stop from 10 to 5 when the first target was hit? What if it also knew to then trail the share trading stop? What if I had a target and it knew to cancel my share trading stop order once my target was hit? All automatically? So that all I had to do was get into the share trading trade, and after that I could essentially walk away because the software was managing the share trading for me according to my specifications?

That is the kind of software that is available today. All a trader has to do is wait and be patient for an appropriate entry level, take the entry, and then the share trading software can manage the trade for him according to his own share trading specifications. This process removes a lot of the mental stress involved in share trading, and helps to prevent traders from making the common mistakes that ruin many of them while share trading. This type of functionality is not readily available with many brokers, but I'm sure they will catch on and the improvements in this field will continue to roll along. Today this type of share trading software is available through third-party vendors who create the code, and then brokers elect, or not elect, to offer this platform to their customers.

Three of these platforms that I'm familiar with in this share trading category are TradeMaven (www.trademavenllc.com), Strategy Runner (www.strategyrunner.com), and NinjaTrader (www.ninjatrader.com). In my experience they are all fantastic leaps in share trading technology. TradeMaven is memory intensive and can slow down a user's computer, so it is important to have a fast, stand alone system when using this. Strategy Runner is also good, and I used them for a while, but they do charge a "per trade" fee that can quickly add up. NinjaTrader has a low monthly fee and is easy on system resources, and this is the one that I currently use.