And you should get lots of choices in the way you size charts and choose color schemes, so they'll be easy to read. Most quote systems are set up to alert you when a stock reaches a target price or broaches some technical indicator, such as the 50-day moving average. That's why some traders opt for multiple monitors, upward of eight. They may use four to watch charts of the stocks they're following. A couple of others might dispense market news while yet another monitor could be reserved for entering orders.
Traders typically move up gradually from one to, say, two, then four or six monitors.
Make sure the platform you select easily accommodates multiple monitors. Daytraders use this information to discern short-term trading ranges. The better quote services store a day's or more worth of time sales data. Options chains Entry-level trading platforms such as Money.net's Screamer allow you to enter specific options contracts and track their price movements in real time. But to really get a handle on what's happening, you need to be able to monitor an entire options chain.