Yeah can go a long way with just a laptop. I'm doing all kinds of activity on a 15.6" 1080p display.
It's a low-end gaming laptop with an SSD / avg. gfx card / 120hz display so it's nice and smoother visually than a lot of more expensive setups and physically no problems either. Most i've ever had to push it so far which ran perfectly fine is: 4x Virtual Desktops ; 6 bots running simultaneously; multiple API products open totalling 10+ markets ready for manual trading at any time; chunky excel document etc. ; 3 google chromes open one of which running HD youtube videos for bg music.
if anyone's out there and they don't know about windows virtual desktops; get to know. I was originally gonna get a setup like this but have found I don't even need them as VDs are fine.
VD Shortcuts:
Create new VD: Windows+Ctrl+D
Close current VD: Windows+Ctrl+F4 (open applications collapse into the previous VD)
Switch between VD's: Windows+Ctrl+Left / Windows+Ctrl+Right
Only improvement I want to make is plugging in a 2nd display via the HDMI 2.0 port turned vertically so I have more prices visually accessible to me but I see that more as an accessory and I don't believe it would tax the system much during desktop use.
Only bottleneck is can't play fav. games at enough fps. Good thing I've found a new game I suppose...
Look forward to building a new mini-itx setup at some pt in next year then laptop can become the backup, should be able to move about w both of those fairly easily if needed