How to attach another monitor to your laptop and show more charts

Posted by jmot in Friday, April 11th 2008 under: Productivity No Tags

A good practice in trading is to look at charts in multiple timeframes. Longer timeframe charts tell us the longer term trend. Shorter timeframe charts are for our entries and exits. And if you are trading forex, you will need charts for different currencies and monitor their correlations etc. Do you also need a window for reading realtime news? Hey, you will definitely need a window for your brokerage platform…With all that, did you ever find that your 15″ laptop monitor is too cluttered? Switching between windows can make us miss good early entry points.

Here is the solution!

Buy another LCD monitor (I just got mine, a Dell 22″ widescreen LCD monitor, Dell E228WFP, at S$399).
Connect the LCD monitor to your laptop’s VGA port (most laptops should have this).
For Win XP users, right-click on your desktop and click “Properties”.
Click on the “Settings” tab.
Click to select the extended monitor and check “Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor. Click “OK”.
Notice how you can now draw a window from your laptop monitor onto the extended monitor. Now, here is a glimpse of my trading room with my extended monitor

There you have it! Now you can show more charts and is clearer as well

If you find this post or this blog is helpful to you in any way...do consider buying jmot a kopi (aka coffee)!

11 Comments Already

reno Said,

April 11th, 2008 @7:22 am

that’s exactly what I do also on my laptop. A 2nd monitor adds so much more.

kok heng Said,

April 13th, 2008 @6:21 pm

Woah, Just ordered the same 22′ Dell Moniter.
Hi JMOT, each email you send out you affect one life and indirectly 5 more lifes and so on. Set up autoresponders if you feel there is too much emails.
I agree if your ultimate aim is to be positive. Then leave this email thing behind. Readers can get your messages from hints in your blog. If they can’t, you are not jesus here to save the world.

April 13th, 2008 @8:58 pm

Hi JMOT,

One suggestion.
Maybe you can create ‘Stuff for beginners’ category for beginner traders and the layman. And put your option tutorial, money management, useful books and websites in there. Somehow, I feel your site is not that navigable.

jmot Said,

April 14th, 2008 @4:27 pm

hi kok heng, thanks for your feedback. i will see what i can do

April 14th, 2008 @4:34 pm

hi kok heng, initially i started out as doing “community service”. i know i will need to stop some time. well, the time has arrived.

Poshlim Said,

April 29th, 2008 @8:17 am

Hi jmot,

Is a 2nd monitor all you need to trade forex? Is there minimum system requirement on my notebook if I want to extend a 2nd monitor to my notebook? I’m using a 4 year old IBM Thinkpad R50e notebook with 1.6Ghz and 504MB RAM. What if I want to connect a 3rd monitor to my notebook in future?

April 29th, 2008 @9:24 am

Hi Jmot,
It’s me again. I have another question. If I only want to extend one external monitor to my notebook, should I get a normal LCD monitor or a widescreen monitor for forex trading purposes? And what’s the ideal size for forex trading?

April 30th, 2008 @5:15 am

hi Poshlim, actually, if you ask me, i could do with another monitor to monitor correlation and for news and other stuff. so i think, 3 monitors will be the best config for me.

i am not too sure if there is a minimum requirement. however, you got to be careful that you are not running too many resident programs with your 500 MB else your computer will drag.

a 3rd monitor? best to get another PC

i prefer widescreen for the very reason that i can see more i mean, not just the charts alone. i can even watch movies alongside the charts!

April 30th, 2008 @8:25 am

Thanks for your advice. I am keen to get 2 of the latest Samsung USB 19″ monitors to connect to my notebook. It’s actually meant for my husband who’s trading forex part time and he might consider doing it full time. That’s why I’m planning to set up the multi-screen system as a surprise birthday present for him. Will it help if I increase the notebook’s RAM?

April 30th, 2008 @2:15 pm

i see, so lovely of you, Poshlim one way is to connect up the monitor to try first. if your notebook slows down, then try to add RAM…

poshlim Said,

April 30th, 2008 @5:17 pm

Hi Jmot,
Thanks for the advice! Have a nice holiday!!