Operating system? Hardware specs are worthless without understanding what OS you are going to deal with.

Quoted from JohnVM
I do straight quant stuff but this is how I set up shop:

First, it depends what you do, and if you're only live trading or running research. For live trading, as fast CPU as you can get and thats most of it, unless youre running large realtime databases in memory. Having 16-24GB of RAM available in case you need a lot of data in memory never hurts.

For research, a nice raid array (I recommend Areca 1680-ix), bunch of hard disks to tear through the data rapidly, lots of ram (24-128GB), and a good CPU (or multiple).

Despite sounding like a lot, none of these systems need to cost in excess of $5000 or so these days. Pretty cheap compared to trading returns.

These requirements are probably more than most need, but for my strategies I tear through years of tick data running all sorts of models/math on historical tick data, and it requires a ton of data space, speed and # crunching. Of course you also have to have the software (which is usually proprietary) to do such things...

Very informative and helpful.... :)

I do straight quant stuff but this is how I set up shop:

First, it depends what you do, and if you're only live trading or running research. For live trading, as fast CPU as you can get and thats most of it, unless youre running large realtime databases in memory. Having 16-24GB of RAM available in case you need a lot of data in memory never hurts.

For research, a nice raid array (I recommend Areca 1680-ix), bunch of hard disks to tear through the data rapidly, lots of ram (24-128GB), and a good CPU (or multiple).

Despite sounding like a lot, none of these systems need to cost in excess of $5000 or so these days. Pretty cheap compared to trading returns.

These requirements are probably more than most need, but for my strategies I tear through years of tick data running all sorts of models/math on historical tick data, and it requires a ton of data space, speed and # crunching. Of course you also have to have the software (which is usually proprietary) to do such things...

We are currently working on a review of some trading hardware. We will report our findings shortly....

Quoted from 123trader
I'm a regular trader, but my profession is Computer Technology. I'm always available for advice/questions on any hardware or software issues. Also for freebie trading resources or other free software that's available on the net.