Can You Trade With A Mac?
Stockscores.com Perspectives for the week ending September 5, 2012
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Your common sense is keeping you from success in the market. This Fall, Tyler Bollhorn's new book will show how overcoming your common sense can allow you to beat the market.
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In this week's issue:
This week's Market Minutes video highlights the basics of how to read stock charts and discusses an important indication that the markets may finally be getting better for traders. Check it out by clicking here.
Can you trade from an Apple Mac computer? This is a question that I have been asked many times. You only need to walk past an Apple store on a Saturday afternoon to know that Apple products are flying off the shelf. Rightfully so, with great design and innovation, they are desirable products.
The problem is that most financial and trading software is Windows based. The charting software that your broker provides probably only works on Windows as is the case for advanced trading software like Trade Station. Using the basic web based trading platforms appears to be the only way to trade on a Mac.
When Apple announced their new laptop line up with Retina displays, I decided to make the Mac work for trading. The motivation is the extremely high resolution of the Retina display, it allows for 2880 by 1800 pixels. There are, however, a few caveats on that.
First, let me explain resolution. It is not the size of your screen that determines how much you can view on it, it is the number of pixels. The higher the resolution, the more content you can display on a single screen.
The typical resolution is 1024 by 768. Your high definition TV can display 1920 by 1080 but very few laptops are capable of putting that many pixels in to a small space. The fact that Apple came out with a laptop screen that displays 2880 by 1800 pixels is a huge step beyond their competition and it is the reason I chose to convert.
The problem is that the computer will only display 1920 by 1200 if you go with the Display settings in the Mac operating system. The screen is capable of more but the operating system does not provide a setting to go beyond this setting.
I found some software called SwitchResX that gives you the ability to push the Retina display to display the full 2880 by 1800 resolution that the screen is capable of. Admittedly, the text is very small and I only use it when I am running Trade Station but with this program I can use the full resolution that the screen allows.
Now, how do you actually run software on a Mac that is only intended for Windows?
There are two options. Apple's operating system comes loaded with something called Bootcamp which gives the user the ability to choose which operating system to load. You can make the Apple machine run with Windows by loading that operating system on and selecting it as the operating system to run with Bootcamp.
The better option is to use software that allows for a virtual machine. The most popular, and the one that I use, is called Parallels. It allows me to run Windows like it is a program within the normal Mac operating environment. Just as I run an Apple program like iPhoto, I can run Windows. Then, within Windows, I can run Trade Station and my broker's trading platform.
It works great. There are a few quirks with running Windows within the Mac operating system. For example, you have to get used to the different Mouse clicks that Apple uses, although it is pretty easy to set up your Mouse to work just like it does in Windows.
The main complaint against Parallels is that it should run Windows slower than a machine dedicated to running Windows. This is true, but the new Apple laptops are available with extremely fast processors that overcome the burden that Parallels brings.
As a comparison, I did a Windows performance test between my Mac laptop running Windows 7 under Parallels and my ultra fast Falcon Trading Computer. The Falcon is overclocked to run 3.7Ghz, my Mac laptop is the top of the line available from Apple running 2.7Ghz with 16 GB of RAM.
The Windows Performance ratings show my Falcon desktop earning a 7.6 score for calculations per second. The Mac laptop got a 7.5. The Mac laptop earns a 7.8 for memory operations per second versus the 7.6 that the Falcon gets. For a laptop running Windows and the Apple operating system, this is amazing. When I use Trade Station, I cannot notice any performance weakness on the Mac. With the Retina display running its high resolution, I can trade just as well from a Starbucks as I can from home with my dedicated trading computer.
I find it a bit awkward to transfer files between the Mac laptop and my other Windows computers so I went searching for a solution that would make file sharing simpler. This is an area where I think Microsoft has Apple beat.
Cloud computing is the new buzz for file storage; putting all of your files on a server that can be accessed from any device is a great solution to the problem of getting the files you need when you are not in front of your main computer. Apple has iCloud which is great for sharing photos and music across your home machine, your iPad and iPhone. However, it falls apart if you want to access a Word or Excel document.
Microsoft has launched a service called Skydrive which overcomes this problem. It acts like a drive that you can access from any of your computer but, because it is in the Cloud (on a server out there in Internetland), you can access it from any computer that has access to the Internet. I can open an Excel document on my iPhone or from any computer that I am using.
I really have little need to network my home computers together, I can instead run them all individually accessing my Skydrive. Best of all, this service is free as long as you don't go over their data storage limit.
With their success, Apple has the resources to develop and launch products that are just better than their competitors. The reality is that traders still need tools that are built for the PC world. With products like Parallels and Skydrive, there is no reason to not trade with a Mac.Back To Top
There are a number of signs that the market is improving. While the indexes made nice gains over the summer, most stocks did not go up. It was a bad trader's market because there were few individual stocks that made big, market beating moves.
I am seeing money coming back to the smaller stocks that do not make up the big indexes. There are stocks benefitting from the central bank stimulus trade, the metals and mining stocks that are starting to improve on speculation that the US Fed and European Central Bank are going to print money to stimulate their economies. Gold and Silver are doing well.
Second, the strength in the major market indexes is starting to broaden. While the S&P 500 has made good gains over the past couple of months, the smaller caps have lagged. Today, the small cap and mid cap sectors made good gains and look like they are going to start to catch up to the big indexes.
Those are good signs for traders who tend to find opportunity in these areas. Here are a couple of ETFs that I found:
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1. IWM
IWM is the Russell 2000 ETF, based on generally smaller cap stocks. This sector has been overlooked while the big market indexes have surged higher, it looks like it is time for them to play catch up. Support at $80.50.
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2. T.MAG
T.MAG is breaking through resistance that has held up all year. The Silver stocks have been strong the past week as investors look toward stimulus from the US Fed and ECB. Support at $9.50.
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References
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Disclaimer
This is not an investment advisory, and should not be used to make
investment decisions. Information in Stockscores Perspectives is often
opinionated and should be considered for information purposes only. No
stock exchange anywhere has approved or disapproved of the information
contained herein. There is no express or implied solicitation to buy or
sell securities. The writers and editors of Perspectives may have positions
in the stocks discussed above and may trade in the stocks mentioned. Don't
consider buying or selling any stock without conducting your own due diligence.
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