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Linux Friendly Online Brokerages?
freelunch asks: "I need to switch online brokers and, not wanting a dedicated Windows box just to trade, would like to find one that has Linux friendly Level 2 tools. Many of the Java trading platforms are unreliable/incompatible/unsupported under Linux (Scottrader is very unreliable and not L2). Any help?"
Then again I make about 2-3 transactions per year (personally I have trouble calling a $20,000 asset purchase a "trade").
If you're an active trader who doesn't work on Wall Street, I can see why Linux might be all the you can afford. Unless you're one of the 25% of traders who beat the market out of sheer luck! I'm sure the big trader boys and MM's on Wall Street appreciate having suckers like you to "churn" for them!
It sounded like a troll to me. If I ask a specific question like, "I want to find a good CAD program that will run on a laptop running OS X" then it is not appropriate or useful to answer, "CAD programs only run on Windows, use Windows." It is doubly inappropriate to make glib and derogatory remarks about "playing with the big boys" while doing so.
The poster stated that they were looking for a Linux solution, telling them not to do what they want to is in no way helpful. If your opinion is there is no such solution, fine then say that. In any case as other posters have pointed out, there are a dozen or so companies that do what the user wanted. We obviously don't know the parameters within which this project must fit, aside from those stated. Maybe he is working in an environment where Windows is not allowed. Maybe he runs SELinux and wants to keep all his banking locked up, encrypted, and protected from hacking within a Linux v-server. Maybe he is just an engineer who uses his machine for Linux development and wants to do some more serious day trading than he has been. The point is, is someone asks a specific question, it is presumptuous and unproductive to tell them that what they are doing is incorrect and to do something else. Doing so in the manner the earlier poster did is either trolling or flaming.
Level 2 is for day traders, that is, people who want to play video games with the stock market, and aren't interested in investing.
It involves having some ultimately useless technical information such as the price of a stock right now this very second OMG! Buy buy SELL!
Level 3 is reserved for the Martian overlords who really control the stock market.
Level 2 is for day traders, that is, people who want to play video games with the stock market, and aren't interested in investing.
It may be true that some day traders aren't interested in investing but some are. Though I have yet to start trading or investing I plan on doing both. What I plan on is to setup two different accounts, one for investing for the long term and the other for trading. Not just day trading but a mix of day, swing, and longer term trading.
FalconShould there be a Law?