Data feeds and profits

I am member of trading community for last 10 years and investor community for 18 yrs. Being IT pro by profession, I got chance to see what is being used in many big mnc banks or orgs for trading etc.

I used many simple utilities developed by community members in past and also helped members to develop some real good systems. I also decided to share some good utility at non profit basis to community. This was part of giving back to community. Traderji mods really supported to develop these simple utilities.
Based on request of members, I decided to offer commercial support for these free utilities. It helped me to understand situation on ground. Here are some findings. The disclaimer: this post is pure observation about what I saw in markets, May or may not apply to group or all parts of community.

The reason of post is to help fellow members to know some basic things. Gurus can add, agree, disagree points below.
This is going to be series of posts and not just one. You can always debate and deny any point or whole.


Here are observations.
Many guys have very basic knowledge about how to use computers for trading.
Most of time machines are heavily loaded with some stupid freeware apps, which hack browsers and slow down machine. Very few guys use quality antivirus like say norton. I just do not understand when someone is trading real money. How can you run terminals in an insecure env like no antivirus, no antispam?

I will post more in coming days. I will come to datafeed and profits soon.
Let me know your thoughts.

This is one of the reasons I stopped helping people thru Teamviewer.
You seem to have installed your software on lot of machines thru Teamviewer.

mrkanitkar

MS Windows is not designed to be maintenance free or something that users can manage on their own. For a long time, I was part of team that was required to perform preventive maintenance on key computer servers even as my official core designation and work was active programming.

Amount of temporary files created by windows is mind boggling ... you have to do clean up at least every weekend (ideally daily) to stay in peak optimal state.

Most ppl never even bother with this until computer breaks down.

With rampant piracy, every update from microsoft makes s/w more secure, but not from user's POV, but from Microsoft's POV!!

Dear Josh,
I know you done very hard work on supporting people. Every other day I used to see msg saying "do it on my machine now" with team viewer id.
I really appreciate your efforts. When I hired team of software pros, I decided to offer the similar utility with c# and decided to offer commercial support as people requested. The basic idea is to just cover cost of developer's salary to some extent, practically it's free as I do not make even single paisa out of it.

Dear mastermind007,
You hit right on nail. Most of traders are not aware that what can happen if they are running machine without any updates, antivirus. They trade using machines which are full or virus. Many times they do not understand how machine became slow, halted, disconnected from net and some important data files got deleted. This is all magic of one or other virus. Recently I was forced by a user to bypass excel security in registry to run some formulas.
Actual problem was his machine have pirated windows, pirated office, no antivirus and he wants to trade using it and make real money.

It would be nice if we list "the basic hygiene of " Trader's terminal or "TWS" here. Following things come to my mind. Your contribution will help us to build nice list of what should there on TWS and what should not be.

TWS should be restricted to following software
1. Operating system - windows 7 or 8 (no less)
2. Antivirus - symantec antivirus or mcafee. No free Antivirus.
3. Ms office 2010 or 2007 but not 2013 (as support for 64 bit RTD not there)- Home & student edition
4. Chrome, IE, Firefox.
5. Team viewer, Amiadmin, Skype/ any chat app.
6. A headphone (if needed to chat on call)
7. Trading terminal provided by broker (latest version).
8. Charting app like Amibroker, Metastock etc.
9. Screen saver disabled.

TWS should not have following things.
1. Any pirated software
2. Any unknown software/ new version.
.. more to come...

Does and Don'ts.
.. more to come...

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Let me know your thoughts.