Trading is risky, and most day traders lose money. Read our full disclaimer.

Warrior Trading Blog

My NEW Day Trading Station | Ross Cameron

 

Ross here from Warrior Trading. In this video, I’m going to walk you through my new day trading station, and I’m going to walk you through what I would say is probably the basic trading station that most six and seven-figure traders would be using at a minimum.

 

 

I would say this is a pro day trading station. You could scale it up, you could scale it down, depending on what you like.

So, what we’ve got here on this new trading station, I decided to set one up here at my actual office because, of course, for the last two years, I’ve mostly been working from home, which has been great, but it’s nice to be able to be back in the office. So, now I’ll have two trading stations, one at home and one here. And this one is pretty simple. It’s a little bit more basic than the one that I’ve set up at home. In fact, the one at home was the trading station I had here at the office, but then I moved it back home at the beginning of COVID.

So, what we have here is one computer right here. This is a Falcon laptop, it is the F-30. The F-15 is a really good laptop, that’s actually the one that I use at home. I actually like it a little bit better. The F3-0 has a really loud fan which I don’t love, but it is the F-30, so it’s a pretty high-powered laptop. And we’ve got four HDMI monitors, as you can see right here. These are monitors that you can get on Amazon for like 120 bucks each. They’re not anything fancy. I’m not sure… I don’t think they’re 4K, but they’re HDMI monitors, and they’re good. They’re good enough. They’re good enough for what I need. So, I’ve got four of those, and then I’ve got this one little USB monitor down here, which you probably wouldn’t need that, but you certainly could.

So, to look at the connections on this, in the back right here, this laptop has three HDMI ports. So, we’ve got the power, and then one, two, and three. So, these cables go to HDMI. So, I have three of these monitors connected with the HDMI in the back, but there’s only three, and I have four monitors. So how did I do that? Well, what I ended up using, and we’ll see it right over here, is this USB to HDMI adapter. And you can get these on Amazon, you get them at Staples. They’re not too expensive. And you can plug in, I don’t remember how many, probably four or five. You probably wouldn’t want to plug four or five of these and run four or five external monitors on most laptops. They probably wouldn’t handle it very well, but you could if you want to and try it.

So, anyways, this is HDMI… Sorry, it’s HDMI here. It’s USB right here. So, that is USB to HDMI, and so, then that gives me my fourth monitor over there. And then, this fifth one is also USB, and that’s right here, and this is just one of these little portable monitors which I kind of like. I can have one tucked down here, and I can keep the chat room up on it and that kind of thing. This stream deck, this is for broadcasting. I’ve got to actually configure it. So, that’s not something you would probably need.

The microphone, obviously, this is for my setup for broadcasting. That’s not something you’d probably need for your trading. And really, this is it. So, you’ve got one laptop and four monitors, and I think that’s the basic of what you would need. And really, not even just the basic, I think that this is perfectly adequate.

In the back, I’ve got a six monitor rack, but I don’t have monitors in the center, and I moved these ones both into the left and right. So, I could push those out and then add two monitors in the middle and then have six total. Running six monitors off one laptop, that is pushing it a little bit. I would need to use two more of these HDMIs, USB to HDMIs. Then the fan’s really going to be running on the computer.

So, while I could do that, that’s not really my absolute favorite thing to do, and I really don’t think it’s necessary. So, in terms of what I actually think makes sense for most traders… My workflow, and this, to answer the question, some people have… preemptively answer, “Why not use curve monitors? Why not just use two of the big curve monitors?” So, part of my workflow, I often am double-clicking the top of a chart so I can make it larger. Move this back. So, if I was using a really big monitor this would go full screen across the whole thing. And so, I like having these separate workspaces, so I’ve got this one, and then I can have another one, of course, up here. Set that one up like that, and I can have both of these be full screen like that. And it’s just very easy for me to work within this sort of workspace, workspace, workspace, workspace.

Now, I like using laptops. Not everyone does, but I like it just for the fact that it’s portable, which is really convenient. So, the way I have this set up is I have my trading on the laptop screen right in front of me. And then, I usually have the stock that I’m focusing on primarily, like the one that I like the most will be on this screen right here. So, this is my broker platform on this screen, and then the screen right above is the stock that I’m watching most closely, and then the screen above that is usually a couple other stocks that I’m watching somewhat, but not as closely. And then, these are kind of similar. They’re monitors that I have set up for stocks I’m sort of watching, they’re on the watch list, but not really focusing on too much.

And to be honest, I don’t usually have… So this allows me two stocks for each monitor. So one, two stocks for each monitor. And I usually don’t have more than four stocks that I’m watching on any given day. You could try… You could fill up 20 charts, 20 monitors, if you wanted to, but I think you would get this overwhelmed feeling that there’s… you’re watching too much. And at one point I had 12 monitors set up, so I’ve been there. And I found that I just ended up totally ignoring most of them. And I was really just watching my trading screen and then the one or two stocks that were really in focus and maybe one or two that were sort of watchlist.

So that’s back to four stocks. So keep it simple. This works great. And, and this also leaves me room if I want to have YouTube up here, or I want to have the chat room up here, I could do that. I can have my broadcasting software down on this little monitor. So this really, for me is perfectly adequate. It’s not the biggest trading station that you guys have ever seen me use, but I would say for most six, seven figure traders, this would be perfectly adequate. And if you’re striving to be a successful trader, it makes sense to set up your trading station similar to what a successful trader would use. Again, could you trade on just one laptop? Could you trade on your mobile phone? Absolutely. But, I don’t think that that’s what most people are going to do who are trying to actually make a living at this.

So get yourself off to a good start, set up a good trading station. In total, these are like $400, $450 in monitors, probably $60 for the monitor rack. And then the laptop, this one might have been like 4,500 bucks. It was a pretty expensive laptop, but like I said, it’s a little overkill and I don’t love it, but the only reason I really need a laptop like that is because of broadcasting, because I’m going to broadcast out to YouTube, to Facebook, to our chat room. And so when you’re broadcasting, especially to multiple places at the same time, you need a pretty strong laptop. So for me, it’s fine. But for someone else, you could probably just as easily swap this one out and pop one in that’s like 1500 bucks. And then you’re in around $2,000 for the whole thing.

And you can always piecemeal it a little bit. You could start with two monitors, get the rack for six, but start with two and then add a third one centered up on the top and then add a fourth one, and then you’ve got four. And then maybe you say down the road, “You know what, I might like two in the middle, so I can keep my email on watch or I can have Spotify on a full thing or so I can go shopping on Amazon when there’s not much happening in the market.” Whatever you want. So there’s nothing wrong with that. I do think that there’s something to be said for less is more so this is the station that I’m going to be using. You’ll be seeing me here quite a bit.

You’ll probably be seeing me more from kind of like this view here or something like that. And we’ll see how it works. All right. I hope you guys enjoy. If you have any questions at all, please put them down in the comments. I’m happy to answer them. I’ve gone through… If it comes to trading stations, I’ve gone through it. I’ve been doing this for so long. I’ve piecemealed so many different trading stations. I’ve dealt with issues with monitors, with broadcasting software, with getting the right microphones, with getting the right video. I’ve gone through all of it, so I am happy to be a resource. Ask me questions if you have them. Hit the thumbs up if you like the trading station and I’ll see you guys for the next episode.

And that right there was an entire video with no ads. I don’t monetize my YouTube channel with video ads, which means you guys get to enjoy the content, but do me a favor, please hit that subscribe button and give me a thumbs up and let YouTube know that this channel is the channel to watch if you want to learn about day trading.