Help Choosing A High-Spec Futures Trading Laptop

vikingtemplar · 3 Nov 2017 at 15:24

Looking for some recommendations for a trading laptop. Yes, I have researched the **** out of this and read threads on numerous forums — but I keep ending up in this daily cyclical-loop 2nd guessing my decisions. Basically I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m lost. I keep flip-flopping between a gaming laptop and a workstation (which are way more expensive).

I’m running, 10-14 hours daily, CQG (trade charting and custom indicators software), twitter feeds, Excel (RTD-fed through CQG) running complex formulas, a streaming news feed. I do not play games, 5-6 tabs open in chrome.

I need:

17 inch HD or UHD (but due to scaling issues, perhaps 4K is not the best in a 17?).
Chip — coffee lake? Any recommendations on this?
32GB minimum (I’d like to be able to upgrade this myself).
GPU — this is a sticking point. Do I go with a gaming 10XX or a workstation class GPU. From what I understand, the trading software uses the Intel chip solely to calculate/process my indicators, and the GPU would therefore simply draw the 2D lines/charts on my monitors — is this correct?
Would Q-Max tech be sufficient?
I need the ability to output to 3, 43inch 4K@60hz monitors (so a 3+ 1 laptop screen).
SSD n.2 slots
I use my own keyboard and mouse.
Portability not important. As long as I can get it in some kind of bag that is fine, but I do need to move with it, hence the search for a laptop.
Not too noisy (I don’t think the GPU will be all that stressed based on my requirements?
Cost not all that important either — with these specs it’ll be what it has to be.
I’d like the ability to upgrade internals myself — buying a lower specced laptop in terms of SSD’s and RAM.

Last thing to note, I am a Futures trader, trading 12-15 products, I can have over 40 charts, ladders and custom indicators open at one time, therefore this is far more computationally intensive than a standard stock trading setup.

Could someone recommend a laptop (from whatever category) based on these specs? And perhaps a little explanation as to why? Thanks for your time any help with this.

epc1 · 5 Nov 2017 at 00:24

Have a look at Lenovo's p51 line

Waza · 2 Dec 2017 at 07:30

Do you need a 17” laptop if you’re using other monitors with this. I have a dell xps 9560 15” 16gb ram, 500ssd for my trading rig which I run 2 mt4’s with each of them having 26 pairs and 6 indicators on every single pair. I also have 2 other monitors to use for charts. This runs no problem and I did think the 15” would be too small but in fact it’s not. I can trade on this alone if I want to.

ScoTTyBEEE · 2 Dec 2017 at 21:07

You don't need a gaming graphics card. Have you looked into your ram usage to see you actually need 32gb? Seems like a lot for what you're running. I'd say get a 4 core HQ (H means it's soldered to the board and Q means 4 cores, this is how all the top laptop processors are labelled) processer for sure though.

If you do need 32gb then be careful with what you can buy can actually run that amount. 64gb, I'm not even sure you can get laptops that can handle that.

Outputting to 3 screens is probably something you can do with daisy chaining them, look into this.

I have a 15" 4k laptop I use for trading. Most programs scale fine but you won't know for sure until you test them. If they don't scale well it's more like, for example in my trading software the icons are really small, but it's not really a big issue for me.