Day trading, as its name implies, involves acquiring and selling securities within the same day. And for you to be able to find success in this practice, you have to be skilled — and you have to have an efficient trading laptop.
Yes, apart from knowing certain trading strategies and keeping yourself abreast with everything that could catalyze short-term market fluctuations, having a high-performing day trading laptop is also essential.
Furthermore, through this article, we’re giving you a walkthrough of the 5 laptops you can use for your day trading endeavors.
What You Need To Consider
First and foremost, let’s talk about the core performance specs you need to consider when buying a trading laptop and setting up a trading laptop. We prepared this specs in collaboration with professionals from tradingcomputers.com.
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Processor
Trading computers are generally equipped with high-performance processors to accommodate the amount of data that traders use and monitor.
For day trading machines, in particular, you have to have at least a processor with at least 2.8GHz. Gigahertz refers to the processing speed. Moreover, you also have to look at the number of cores, which determines how many processes your laptop can run simultaneously.
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RAM
In a nutshell, random access memory or RAM is your machine’s short-term memory. Thus, the higher this number is (it is measured in gigabytes or GB), the more efficient your laptop can run multiple processes.
For day traders, experts recommend having a laptop with 16GB RAM. However, the minimum can be 8GB.
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Storage
If RAM is your laptop’s short-term memory, your hard drive acts as your machine’s permanent storage. In addition, in place of the usual hard drive disk, laptops are more suitable for day trading if they have a solid-state drive (SSD) with 256GB worth of storage. SSDs are more durable, energy-efficient, and a whole lot quieter.
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Monitor Size and Display
If you want to follow more charts and indexes at once, it will be to your advantage to have a widescreen with a quality display. Furthermore, your laptop should also have the capacity to directly connect to another monitoring unit.
Though some traders use only one monitor with several split screens, many still find it more convenient if their trading laptop has more monitors.
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Graphics Card
And speaking of monitors… You need to have a graphics card with at least 2GB of GPU. Think of GPU as your RAM for processing graphics.
So, if you have a poor-performing graphics card, your machine won’t be able to quickly and effectively render any image to your monitor. This is very important for traders because they need to have a quality view of the stocks that they are monitoring.
Best Laptops for Your Day Trading Laptop
So, onto the topic properly. Here’s a comprehensive discussion of the laptops you can use for day trading.
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Falcon F-10
Key specs:
- 15.6” or 17.3” Full HD Display
- 10th Gen Intel MOBILE Processor
- 2.6GHz Base, 4.5GHz Turbo
- 32GB RAM
- Fast Solid State Drive (1TB)
- Multi-monitor and 4K support
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti
- Full color illuminated keyboard
Though made for beginners, the Falcon F-10 can still deliver flawless performance under heavy conditions. You can avail them of their option of a maximum of 6 processor cores and 12 threads.
Additionally, if you want to add two more monitors to cater to other charts or apps, this laptop can directly accommodate up to 2 more monitors. Accessories are available to support 3 more monitors, bringing the total tally to 5.
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Falcon F-15
Key specs:
- 15.6” or 17.3” Full HD Display
- 10th Gen Intel MOBILE Processor
- 2.6GHz Base, 4.5GHz Turbo
- 32GB RAM
- Fast Solid State Drive (1TB)
- Multi-monitor and 4K support
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti
- Full color illuminated keyboard
The Falcon F-10 and F-15 are virtually the same. However, the latter can support up to 6 monitors in total. It can be directly connected to up to 3 monitors (F-10 can only accommodate 2). Thus, this makes it a more efficient asset to your trading laptop.
In addition to its 1TB SSD, you can avail of additional storage worth 2TB — complete with backup software. If you require more storage, on the other hand, you have the option to avail of a third 1TB SSD.
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Falcon F-30A
Key specs:
- 15.6” Full HD Display
- 3rd Gen AMD Desktop Processor
- 3.6GHz Base
- 64GB RAM
- Fast Solid State Drive (1TB)
- Multi-monitor and 4K support
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti
- Full color illuminated keyboard
The Falcon F-30A promises a lightning-fast processing speed — thanks to its AMD Ryzen 7 Desktop CPU processor aptly paired with the new AMD B450 chipset. Moreover, you can avail a maximum of 8 processor cores and up to 16 threads.
Likewise, similar to the F-15, it can be directly linked to 3 monitors. With appropriate accessories, this laptop can support up to 6 monitors in total.
Furthermore, this trading laptop is equipped with communication essentials like a built-in webcam, microphone, and speakers.
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Falcon F-30
Key specs:
- 17.3” Full HD Display
- Intel DESKTOP Processor
- 3.6GHz Base, 4.9GHz Turbo
- 642GB RAM
- Fast Solid State Drive (1TB)
- Multi-monitor and 4K support
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
- Full color illuminated keyboard
- Fingerprint reader
The Falcon F-30 is designed to give day traders a competitive edge even if they’re working in their own trading laptop. It is highly efficient, mainly because of its cores (up to 8), threads (up to 16), cache memory, and processing power.
Additionally, its 17.3” screen comes with a matte display to give more visual convenience. It can also support up to 6 monitors in total (3 via direct connection).
Apart from its 1TB SSD, it further offers a second SSD that can store up to 1 more TB of data.
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Falcon F-30M
Key specs:
- 15.6” OLED Display, Glare Screen
- 9th Gen Intel Core i9 mobile CPU Processor
- 2.3GHz Base, 5.1GHz Turbo
- 64GB RAM
- Fast Solid State Drive
- Multi-monitor and 4K support
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070
- Full color illuminated keyboard
Assisting traders in maximizing their skills, the Falcon F-30M boasts the power of the newly unlocked 9th Gen Intel Core i9 mobile CPU Processor and the Intel H370 chipset. Furthermore, it offers up to 8 cores and 16 threads to help day traders run more charts and apps at the same time.