Cutting back...and withdrawal

Well, do to the much reduced trading activity my Questrade Pro platform is going to cost me $20 a month...or is it $30? No matter, my trading volume is next to nothing right now so it hardly justifies keeping the nicer platform. I liked being able to easily click between accounts and set trades on the fly while watching the real time data stream along, pre and post-market as well.

Now I suffer the withdrawal of not having real time information to work with... although my current trade plan does not need it it was very addicting to have and will be missed.

Having said that, most of what I am looking at trading going forward has more to do with indices than stocks and seemingly I can get free access to realtime S&P500 charts and some other indices.

BPI charts are EOD anyway, I was using trade entries based on previous day numbers, even P&F charts are all EOD. All of my trades are going to be in the 30 day range for now so I really don't need the up to the second information.

Well, due to my needing access to my trading account I wandered over to the QuestraderWeb and the Webtrader browser based trading platforms. The Webtrader is almost unusable for me now as it is just far too restricting. QuestraderWeb is OK. I forgot how much information is available through that platform...tons of company stats, ETF listings, sector lists and news feeds. Quite a bit looks to be realtime as well.

This platform should look after my newer trading needs nicely. With the new options format it will be easier as I can check options without having to try to decipher which option I am looking at anymore.

So, I am down to paying for a monthly subscription to Esignal with an EOD delayed data connection...and that is it for my playing. I could count the Optioneer fees but they haven't kicked in as of yet. I will make liberal use of the stockcharts.com for BPI and P&F when needed.

I will ride out January and see where I go for my play trading next in February.

Jeff.