Alerts

Used correctly day trading alerts can enhance your trading performance. From utilising straightforward technical signals to news and general trade alerts, all could help you maintain an edge over the rest of the market. This page will look at precisely what daily trading alerts are used for and in which markets, including stocks, currency, and futures. It will then break down the best alerts for day trading and how you can use them to increase your profits.

Brokers with Alerts

#1 - FOREX.com

Why We Chose FOREX.com

Founded in 1999, FOREX.com is now part of StoneX, a financial services organization serving over one million customers worldwide. Regulated in the US, UK, EU, Australia and beyond, the broker offers thousands of markets, not just forex, and provides excellent pricing on cutting-edge platforms.

"FOREX.com remains a best-in-class brokerage for active forex traders of all experience levels, with over 80 currency pairs, tight spreads from 0.0 pips and low commissions. The powerful charting platforms collectively offer over 100 technical indicators, as well as extensive research tools."

- DayTrading Review Team
  • Instruments: Forex, Spot Metals
  • Regulator: NFA, CFTC
  • Platforms: MT4, MT5, TradingView, eSignal, AutoChartist, TradingCentral
  • Minimum Deposit: $100
  • Minimum Trade: 0.01 Lots
  • Leverage: 1:50

Pros

  • Alongside a choice of leading platforms, FOREX.com offers a superb suite of supplementary tools including Trading Central research, SMART Signals pattern scanner, trading signals, and strategy builders.
  • FOREX.com offers industry-leading forex pricing starting from 0.0 pips, alongside competitive cashback rebates of up to 15% for serious day traders.
  • The in-house Web Trader continues to shine as one of the best-designed platforms for aspiring day traders with a slick design and over 80 technical indicators for market analysis.

Cons

  • Funding options are limited compared to leading alternatives like IC Markets and don’t include many popular e-wallets, notably UnionPay and POLi.
  • Despite increasing its range of instruments, FOREX.com's product portfolio is still limited to forex and CFDs, so there are no options to invest in real stocks, real ETFs or real cryptocurrencies.
  • FOREX.com's MT4 platform offers approximately 600 instruments, significantly fewer than the over 5,500 available on its non-MetaTrader platforms.

#2 - NinjaTrader

Why We Chose NinjaTrader

NinjaTrader is a US-headquartered and regulated brokerage that specializes in futures trading. There are three pricing plans to suit different needs and budgets, as well as ultra-low margins on popular contracts. The brand's award-winning charting software and trading platform also offers a high-degree of customization and superb technical analysis features.

"NinjaTrader continues to meet the demands of active futures traders looking for low fees and premium analysis tools. The platform hosts top-rate charting features including hundreds of indicators and 10+ chart types."

- DayTrading Review Team
  • Instruments: Forex, Stocks, Options, Commodities, Futures, Crypto
  • Regulator: NFA, CFTC
  • Platforms: NinjaTrader Desktop, Web & Mobile, eSignal
  • Minimum Deposit: $0
  • Minimum Trade: 0.01 Lots
  • Leverage: 1:50

Pros

  • Traders can get free platform access and trade simulation capabilities in the unlimited demo
  • NinjaTrader continues to deliver comprehensive charting software for active day traders with bespoke technical indicators and widgets
  • NinjaTrader is a widely respected and award-winning futures broker and is heavily authorized by the NFA and CFTC

Cons

  • The premium platform tools come with an extra charge
  • There is a withdrawal fee on some funding methods
  • Non forex and futures trading requires signing up with partner brokers

#3 - DNA Markets

Why We Chose DNA Markets

DNA Markets is a forex and CFD broker established in 2020. The broker operates two entities in Australia and the offshore jurisdiction, St Vincent and the Grenadines. Traders can access 250+ markets, with a Standard account for beginners and a Raw account for experienced traders. The reliable MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 platforms are available, alongside Signal Start.

"DNA Markets is an excellent choice for short-term traders familiar with the MetaTrader platforms. The smooth sign-up process also makes it easy to get started while the $100 minimum deposit is accessible. That said, DNA Markets trails the top brokers in education, research and mobile trading. "

- DayTrading Review Team
  • Instruments: CFDs, Forex, Indices, Commodities, Stocks, Crypto
  • Regulator: ASIC
  • Platforms: MT4, MT5
  • Minimum Deposit: $100
  • Minimum Trade: 0.01 Lots
  • Leverage: 1:500

Pros

  • Convenient account funding with 7 base currencies, a $100 deposit and a wide range of payment methods
  • Short-term trading strategies are permitted including scalping and automated trading using Expert Advisors (EAs)
  • 24/5 customer support with response times of <2 minutes during testing

Cons

  • Despite access to MT4 and MT5, there is no proprietary trading app
  • There are limited educational and research tools, reducing its appeal to beginners
  • The investment offering trails alternatives, especially in terms of stocks, cryptos and commodities

#4 - IG

Why We Chose IG

Founded in 1974, IG is part of IG Group Holdings Plc, a publicly traded (LSE: IGG) brokerage. The brand-US offers spread betting, CFD and forex trading across an almost unrivalled selection of 17,000+ markets, with a range of user-friendly platforms and investing apps. For 50 years, IG has maintained its position as an industry leader, excelling in all key areas for traders.

"IG continues to provide a comprehensive package with an intuitive web platform and best-in-class education for beginners, plus advanced charting tools, real-time data, and fast execution speeds for experienced day traders."

- DayTrading Review Team
  • Instruments: CFDs, Forex, Stocks, Indices, Commodities, ETFs, Futures, Options, Crypto, Spread Betting
  • Regulator: FCA, ASIC, NFA, CFTC, DFSA, BaFin, MAS, FSCA
  • Platforms: Web, ProRealTime, L2 Dealer, MT4, AutoChartist, TradingCentral
  • Minimum Deposit: $0
  • Minimum Trade: 0.01 Lots
  • Leverage: 1:30 (Retail), 1:250 (Pro)

Pros

  • As a well-established broker, IG operates under strict regulatory guidelines in multiple jurisdictions, maintaining a high level of trust
  • IG offers an extensive collection of professional and engaging educational resources, including webinars, articles, and analysis
  • The proprietary web-based platform continues to caters to traders of all levels, with advanced charting tools and real-time market data useful for day trading

Cons

  • Stock and CFD spreads still trail the cheapest brokers like CMC Markets based on tests
  • While there is negative balance protection in the UK and EU, there is no account protection or guaranteed stop losses for US clients
  • Beginners might find IG’s fee structure complex, with various fees for different types of trades or services, potentially leading to confusion or unexpected charges

#5 - Pocket Option

Why We Chose Pocket Option

Established in 2017, Pocket Option is a binary options broker offering high/low contracts on forex, stocks, indices, commodities and cryptocurrencies. With over 100,000 active users and a global reach, the platform continues to prove popular with budding traders.

"Pocket Option excels for its easy-to-use web platform which provides a best-in-class user experience for short-term binary traders. The $50 minimum deposit is also accessible for beginners while opening an account is really easy. Looking at the negatives, Pocket Option still trails alternatives in its market offering and regulatory credentials."

- DayTrading Review Team
  • Instruments: Binary Options, Currencies, Commodities, Stocks, Indices, Cryptos
  • Regulator: MISA
  • Platforms: Web, MT4, MT5
  • Minimum Deposit: $50
  • Minimum Trade: $1

Pros

  • Extremely fast and smooth sign-up process that takes less than 2 minutes
  • The MetaTrader platforms offer integrated analysis with helpful technical summaries for short-term traders
  • The range of payment methods beats the majority of rivals, providing fast, secure and convenient deposits for traders in most countries

Cons

  • Despite offering competitive payouts up to 92%, binary brokers like IQCent offer higher returns up to 98% based on tests
  • Pocket Option offers a slimmed down iteration of the MT4 and MT5 that doesn't provide the full charting package for advanced traders
  • The maximum binary contract length of 4 hours is restrictive for longer-term trading strategies. Alternatives like Videforex offer binaries up to 1 month

What Are Day Trading Alerts?

As an intraday trader, you are presented with a number of hurdles to overcome. How do you choose between thousands of different stocks? How do you react to news announcements before the rest of the market?

This is where day trading alerts come in. Put simply, they alert you when a specific event takes place. This event could be a market development, technical indicators, or reaching a specified price target.

Armed with this information you’re able to act or react swiftly, increasing your chance of yielding an intraday profit. You may want to pay more attention to a specific stock, or it may let you know you need to enter or exit a trade.

…but where do you start?

You can get straightforward and free trading signals, that come with your trading platform, and you can get additional, complex alerts that come at a price. The complexity of your notifications will depend on your individual trading style and needs. So…

Why Use Them?

Alerts offer the savvy trader a number of invaluable benefits:

How To Use Trading Alerts

Whilst using alerts comes partly down to personal preference, there are also some fundamental ways you can capitalise on them.

Noise Reduction

One of the benefits of trading alerts software is that it can streamline the decision-making process by reducing market noise. This is particularly handy for beginners, who may feel overloaded by market scanners, news sites, blogs, and any other sources they’re tuned into.

Alerts allow you to simplify the market as you can program your alerts to only monitor stocks once an alert takes place. This will keep you focused on honing your strategy instead of monitoring any and all market activity.

With a bit of practice, you can eventually get to a point where you can set your trade alerts the night before and only look at the asset in the day if an alert is actually triggered.

Entering & Exiting Trades

Head into your brokerage’s platform and you can set precise price target alerts so you’re made aware when a stock breaks out, for example. It won’t make a difference how long it takes or if the stock breaks out higher or lower, you’ll automatically receive an alert when it’s time to make the trade.

Again this will free up time from excessive monitoring, affording you the opportunity to focus on preparing for future trades.

Highlighting Mistakes

Most people only think of alerts as useful for telling you when to enter a position, but they can also be used to recognise failures. Something which most people overlook. If you don’t learn from your mistakes you’ll quickly find yourself deep in the red.

So, how do you use alerts to flag up mistakes? You set an alert for a key level, that if met makes you stop and think carefully. Some traders may think well that’s just basically a stop level.

But use them correctly and you can program them to warn you when you’re approaching a stop level. Then you have the opportunity and time to react.

You can check to see if the stop level is indeed still valid, or whether it’s simply a shakedown. If it is a shakedown you can then give your stop some more wriggle room to elude the trap.

Trading Alert Providers

1000PipBuilder offer forex signals via subscription. Independently verified results highlight potential, and ongoing support from experienced traders means there is more on offer than just signals.
1000PipClimber provides a 100% rule-based forex signal service. Entry, Stop Loss and Take Profit levels are calculated via an advanced algorithm. Comprehensive after sales support puts the service in front of most others.
Access the Binary Destroyer 7.0 system and learn to develop some of the most powerful skills needed to succeed in trading.
ForexSignals.com go beyond offering raw signals. They also provide strategies, powerful tools and professional mentors. The educational element of the service sets it apart from pure signal providers.
Toggle AI provides actionable insights on 35,000 assets spanning multiple classes, industries and geographies.
8topuz is a forex trading algorithm that uses deep neural network machine learning algorithms to execute large numbers of high-frequency trades automatically on the behalf of its users.
CoinMarketCap is a top cryptocurrency data and portfolio tracker, with information on over 11,000 cryptos and premium API services for strategy testing.
Chart Viper is a subscription service for the renowned Autochartist signals and analysis software, available for integration with MetaTrader and Thinkorswim trading platforms.
CoinGecko is a crypto charting and data provider, with a wealth of useful tools, features, educational content and information on over 9,000 coins.
Autochartist is a technical analysis tool that assists with trade set up and patterns, as well as providing signals, market reports and other useful features.
BuySide Global is a popular indicator service compatible with the NinjaTrader 8 platform. Clients can also purchase automated trading systems and membership to community chatrooms.
What2Trade is a free signals provider for forex, cryptocurrency, futures and US stock markets with daily published articles and a strong social media presence.
Trade Ideas is a sophisticated signals and stock scanner service for active day traders.
Forex Signal Factory offers free trading signals to investors looking to speculate on the FX market.

Disclaimer – the service providers listed here are not endorsed, or guaranteed, by DayTrading.com to be fit for any purpose. Any use of third-party service providers is at the user’s personal risk. We may receive financial compensation from providers listed here.

Types Of Alert

Alerts come in various shapes and sizes and you want a service that is relevant for you. Here are some examples;

News Alerts

Every second counts when you’re aiming to profit from small intraday market changes. So, if an app can make you aware of relevant news announcements as quickly as possible, you can maximise profits. The best news notifications of this sort will also come with commentary and analysis to enhance your trading decisions.

Technical Alerts

These will be based on technical analysis. You can create trading alerts based on most of the popular indicators, including:

Most providers allow you to place and create alerts with ease through charts. You can also create various conditions by combining several different indicators. So, you could have momentum trading alerts working alongside moving averages, for example.

Price Alerts

These allow you to respond to price movements as they happen. They create instant buy and sell signals across all markets. Some providers will also allow you to choose between price level alerts and price change alerts, which will automatically reset once triggered.

These live alerts often come with risk management advice to ensure you keep losses to a minimum, in case the strategy doesn’t pay out.

Economic Alerts

If you think markets are going to respond to specific economic events, like non-farm payrolls, for example, you can set up an alert.

Several platforms allow you to scroll through a tailor-made economic calendar and then tick the events you’d like to set reminders for. They’ll usually allow you to specify how you’d like to be notified, and how much notice you would like.

Market Availability

As technology has evolved, effective intraday trading alerts can now be found for nearly all markets. You can now find automated signals for the following markets:

So, whichever market you delve into, from Bats, Nasdaq and Dax to NYSE, you’ll be able to setup live trading alerts with ease.

Methods Of Receiving Alerts

On-Chart Trading Alerts

You can receive your alerts in a number of straightforward ways. You can register for notifications that will pop up when you’re actually in your web-based trading platform, say TradingView, for example.

They will usually make a sound to inform you an event of interest has occurred.

This event could be anything from the breach of a trend line or indicator. This method is ideal for those interested in price action as opposed to static numbers.

For example, if you drew a declining trend line, the alert would be triggered at a different value at 11:00 am vs 15:00 pm, purely as a result of the slope of the line. This means your alert could tell you two different things, both price and time.

Alternatives

You can also download apps specifically dedicated to providing you with professional trading alerts. Alternatively, you can get mobile SMS notifications. These allow you to respond to important market developments even when you’re on the move.

There is even the option of Twitter alerts. That’s right, you can keep up to date with Donald Trump at the same time as receiving crucial trading information. If that isn’t to your fancy you can set up email alerts and absorb data that way.

Technology now allows you to receive your alerts in whichever medium is most suitable for your needs. For example, an intraday trader glued to the screen all day may benefit most from alerts on their web-based platform.

A trader who trades for part of the day whilst juggling other commitments may prefer alerts via SMS.

It’s about finding the system that compliments your trading style and will allow you to digest and act upon information as quickly as possible.

Best Trading Alerts & Software

There are numerous day trading alert services out there. Whilst which one you opt for will depend partly on your market, below some of the best have been collated.

Honest Forex Signals

If you’re looking for FX (forex) trading signal alerts then this is a fantastic choice. Although not free, coming in at $177 for a monthly subscription, you get a vast number of simple and complex signals to choose between. All are user-friendly and straightforward to set up.

They are also renowned for second to none customer support. They are readily available and answer any customer queries almost straight away. So, if you’re looking for a forex trading alerts app to bolster your trade performance, this is a sensible choice.

Trade The News

If your strategy relies on utilising news announcements then this audio package is well worth your consideration. You receive breaking news, plus 24 hour instant analysis directly to your ear on the following topics:

On top of the audio broadcasts, the NewsStation text platform is where you’ll find accurate and detailed analysis moments after breaking announcements. If you’re looking for a system that will ensure you’re one of the first to know, then this is a wise choice.

Real-time Stocks Tracker

If you’re looking for FTSE alerts then this is one of the best options around. This comprehensive app brings you real-time notifications on stock options, news, events, earnings, plus signal scans. If that isn’t enough you can create multiple watch lists, real-time streaming quotes, and interactive charts with over fifty technical indicators.

The only downside is it’s currently only available in the App Store for iOS devices. However, as popularity and demand grow, an Android-based version may well surface. Nonetheless, it remains one of the best systems for receiving day trading stock alerts.

Whilst those are three of the most popular choices, some other options worth considering are listed below:

Can You Profit From Trading Alert Services?

Despite the promise of riches alert service providers claim, there remain some downsides to stay aware of. Firstly, remember that however many benefits trading signals and alerts offer, they don’t replace experience and they won’t work without an effective strategy.

Secondly, you need to take into account slippage. There will always be some lag in the alert and your ability to make or exit a trade, and when you’re intraday trading, every second and tick counts.

So, there are several questions to ask before you sign up for the ‘latest and greatest’ alert system: What is the actual content of the trade alert? Will it include details such as entry price, stop loss and price target? Finally, how many other subscribers are signed up for the same pre-determined alerts? If it’s too many you may find yourself part of the trend and not ahead of it.

Further Reading