What I actually use: a plain setup for the 9-to-5 trader

You need far less to trade around a job than the internet suggests. My whole setup is a charting tool, a spreadsheet, and a fixed routine. This is the honest version of what I actually use and, just as importantly, what I do not. No affiliate links, nothing I was paid to recommend.

The short list

Here is the entire kit:

• A charting tool. Any reputable platform with clean charts and the ability to place orders. The brand matters far less than knowing it well. I do not need dozens of indicators, I need to mark levels and see price clearly.
• A spreadsheet, or a journal template. This is where sizing gets calculated and every trade gets logged. It does more for my results than any charting feature.
• A recurring calendar block. A fixed appointment for the weekend review. This unglamorous entry is doing more work than any indicator on any chart.
• One good book. Something on process and risk, not on secret setups. Read it slowly, more than once.

That is it. If your setup is more complicated than this, the complexity is probably costing you rather than helping you.

What each one is for

The tools are not the method. They are just where the method lives. The chart is for marking levels and placing orders, nothing more. The spreadsheet is for sizing the trade honestly and recording what actually happened, so the weekly review has something to work with. The calendar block is the quiet hero of the whole system, because a review that is not scheduled does not happen, and a method you do not review slowly falls apart.

Notice that none of these is a prediction engine. None of them tells me what the market will do. They help me follow my own rules, which is the only job they need to do.

What I do not use, on purpose

No paid signals. No indicator bundles promising an edge. No second monitor for a strategy that trades once a week. No news feed running in the background, tempting me to react to headlines.

Paid signals deserve a special mention, because the logic gives them away. If someone were genuinely confident their signals made money, they would make far more by simply trading those signals themselves than by selling them to you for a monthly fee. The moment the business is selling the signal rather than trading it, they have quietly told you where they think the real money is, and it is not in the trade. It is in your subscription.

Every one of these adds friction or false confidence rather than an actual edge. Complexity is not sophistication. More often it is just cost, in money, in attention, or in the illusion that a busier screen means a better trader. It does not.

Start cheaper than you think

If you are starting out, do not buy anything yet. Use free charting, a free spreadsheet, and the routine, and run it for a few weeks. Let the method show you what, if anything, is genuinely worth paying for. Most people buy tools to feel like traders. The better path is to trade the simple way first, and let real experience, not a sales page, tell you what is missing.

The spreadsheet and checklists I use are in the free Starter Kit, and the routine they support is The 9-to-5 Trader.

Educational only, not financial advice. Trading carries a real risk of loss.