I continue to be totally in love with Dropbox. Found another use for Dropbox and this time it is in the area of trading. I am already using Dropbox to share templates for MT4 FX trading.
Recently I signed up for a CFD/FX/Futures trading account with Saxo Singapore. The reason why I love it is because of the fact that it has an excellent trading platform. This platform is highly user friendly. It is a Windows application. There are no Mac version of the trading platform (of course, you can use the Mac browser to access the web version).
When you installed a live trading platform from Saxo, you are given (as usual) an user id and a password. That’s very standard. In addition, you are also given a security key. This is like another key for you and is needed for every Windows PC you installed the platform.
Secondly, the platform works on the concept of a workspace. When you create your stock list or your foreign exchange list etc, you are doing all these on a workspace. For example, my workspace consist of CFD trading prices, Live Share prices for USA markets and Singapore markets AND the major foreign currencies that I am trading. All in all, a single workspace is all you need to have ALL your trading on one single screen. Pretty cool.
Anyway, here’s where Dropbox comes in. Let’s say you have 2 PCs. One is at home and one is at work. And perhaps one more mobile in a laptop. First, create a folder in dropbox. Perhaps you might call it “Saxo Trading”.
(1) Instead of saving the security key in a USB thumb drive or in your hard disk (e.g. in your home PC), you save it in a subfolder called “Security Key” and save the security key to dropbox. Then when you go to your next PC (e.g. at work or your laptop), you can easily retrieve it when you install SaxoTrader on your next PC. That’s the easy part.
(2) Here comes the fun part. For your workspace, when you save it (File>Save As), do not accept the defaults proposed by Saxo. Instead, navigate to your Dropbox>Saxo Trading and create a new folder called Workspace. Save your beautiful and your customized workspace template there.
Then when you go to your next PC (e.g. at work or your laptop), you can also open the workspace from the dropbox. Saxotrader remembers where your last workspace is saved so after that you have a SINGLE workspace shared among all your trading computers. Imagine, at home, you added a share in your workspace or did some charting on your workspace, and when you go to work, the same information appears on your work PC or your laptop. That’s cloud computing ! 🙂
As an example, here’s what my dropbox looks like:
Go on.. Sign up with Dropbox.
It is Free and Very Very Good 🙂
