Rithmic is one of the most advanced futures trading platforms available on the market today.

Focusing on day trading strategies, Rithmic offers users all the essential functionality for staying ahead of fast-moving markets: robust analytics, depth of market, advanced order types and more.

The combination of low price and high quality makes Rithmic an easy contender for the top spot in terms of futures trading platforms.

Fees and Commissions

• Platform fee: free or $20 per month for advanced platform.

• $0.50 per contract commission.

Pros

• Designed by knowledgeable and passionate technicians. A futures trading platform designed by people who intimately understand the futures market.

• Low price of subscription and commissions.

• Full essential functionality.

• Fastest order-routing and data feeds available.

• Options expiry data.

Cons

• Focused on futures trading only.

• Intimidating interface.

• No support for beginners.

Rithmic Services

Rithmic is a very focused trading platform designed specifically for advanced futures traders, day traders making short term trades in particular.

As such, Rithmic offers an impressive range of technical services, including analytics, lightning fast and extremely accurate data feeds, options expiry data, top quality order routing, excel functionality and more.

Day traders will not be able to find a more comprehensive suite of tools designed specifically for their futures trading needs.

That said, for anyone who is not an advanced futures trader, Rithmic will be intimidating and overwhelming, with little in the way of guidance or education materials available.

This is not a criticism of Rithmic, but it is important to establish that this is a very focused suite of futures trading tools meant only for very advanced and experienced traders.

Data Flow and Order Execution

Rithmic’s main draw for advanced futures traders is its fast order routing. Day traders trading on the order book will be pleased to see their order execution and their data feed line up almost perfectly, which cannot be said of many other service providers.

Rithmic’s order execution system handles around 20% of the daily traffic on major futures exchanges, and clients from hedge funds to retail investors rely on them for timely data feeds and order execution.

Analytics and Order Types

Rithmic offers strong flexibility in designing the interface to suit your personal needs, as well as a full range of order types for creating sophisticated trading positions that execute at lightning speed.

Advanced day traders will find that they have every necessary tool for undertaking virtually any contemporary trading strategy.

Excel Functionality, Proprietary Signals and Automated Trading

As with any advanced trading platform, Rithmic allows users to develop their own trading signals and automated trading execution, using Excel as an interface.

Day traders can use Rithmic’s Excel functionality to design complex proprietary trading signals that will operate in the trading platform. Extending this functionality, traders can also create automated trading strategies that will execute flawlessly using the Rithmic market interface.

Hardware and Redundancies

Rithmic has taken great precautions to ensure that its access to the markets and full functionality will be operational under any circumstances.

Both its hardware and its connectivity to exchanges are backed up by layers of redundancies, ensuring no unexpected outages for market access, real-time data and order execution.

Customer Service

Rithmic offers limited customer service aimed generally at ensuring the proper installation of its platform.

Users of Rithmic are expected to be comfortable with the full range of advanced functionality, and there is little support available for new traders or day traders who are not technically proficient.

Education Resources and Research

As Rithmic aims its services at advanced and experienced traders, it offers little in the way of educational resources or research for its customers. In the age of booming retail trading, it has become almost an expectation that trading platforms will provide a wealth of supporting resources, research and social and community platforms.

Rithmic is a highly technical platform that provides little to no support for traders who are not already at the advanced stages of futures trading of most of its customers.

Final Thoughts

Simply put, for advanced futures traders looking for the highest quality and reliability in data feeds and order execution, Rithmic may be the best on the market today.

Add in the cutting-edge analytical tools, automation features and low price, and Rithmic is probably the perfect platform for the very specific range of day traders that it is designed for, from retail to institutional.

However, for the average day trader Rithmic is focused on futures to the exception of all other assets, highly technical and advanced and offers a huge range of features that they may never use.

That said, the one feature that may still draw the average day trader to use the Rithmic platform is the industry-beating data flow and trade execution.

For an extremely low price, day traders can ensure that their futures orders are being executed flawlessly using the absolute latest and most accurate data available on the market.

For any day trader who trades even occasionally in the extremely lucrative and competitive futures markets, it may be worth routing their order through Rithmic’s market interface.

The combination of top of the industry data and execution with the lowest possible prices means that there are few better places to trade futures, and it can be worth the added hassle and complication of using an additional platform solely for futures trades.

However, this decision will depend on how committed the day trader is to the performance of their futures trades, while many will be happier to simply use their existing full service broker and avoid added complications.

Any day trader who wishes to learn to focus on the futures market should become accustomed to using Rithmic or similar platforms, as they are essential to staying competitive.

While Rithmic itself offers little in the way of resources for education and training, day traders can find other resources on the Internet for free or as paid services and products.

Then they can gradually learn to fully employ the complex interface of Rithmic to maximize the benefits to futures trading that it offers.

 

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