If you are a Scottrade customer, you must have noticed the little bar at the bottom of your screen once you logged into your account. The bar, which has been there for quite a while, is called Quick Trade Bar and what it does is allowing to trade stocks anywhere when you are already in your account.
Since Scottrade is more than just a platform to trades stocks, ETFs, and options, I often found myself wondering around on the website a long time, some times deep inside a page when researching a stock. Once I was there, if I saw an opportunity that required my immediate action, the only way I could place an order was going back to the home screen and entering my trade from there. Even though the process of going back and forth doesn’t really take a lot of time, it does force to leave the page I was looking at before making the trade and there were times that I found that not very convenient. For this problem, what actually comes handy is the Scottrade Quick Trade Bar.
Basically, the Quick Trade Bar provides a shortcut for you to conveniently trade stocks even when you are away from the homepage of your account. With the Quick Trade Bar, all the actions can occur at one place. For example, entering the symbol of the stock you want to trade in the Quick Trade Bar, you will get all the current market data you need before placing the order, as well as major indices, and once you are ready you are able to trade right from there. The Quick Trade Bar features real-time quotes that are automatically refreshed, with intervals you can adjust yourself (default is 5 seconds) if you just want to keep an eye on the stock. Once you decides to pull the trigger, you can trade in the Quick Trade Bar by entering the quantity, order type (buy or sell), trading session, and duration, and review and submit your order, just like what you would do with the order form on the website.
In addition to trading, you can also check your current account balance from the Quick Trade Bar (just click the $ button on the top right corner of the Quick Trade Bar). This is another convenient feature that I like quite a lot because there were times before that I forgot how much I had in my account that could be used for trade and I had to either go back again to check or write down the number on a piece of paper. Now the Quick Trade Bar eliminates that need as well.
For me, even though I don’t trade a lot and when I do, I already have all the information I need before placing an order (for example, I used Scottrade’s research tools to do my homework), the Quick Trade Bar is still a valid tool that makes trading a little bit easier. For active traders, it could be proven to be more than just convenience.
