BEST TRADING TERMINAL

The best trading terminal

Are you looking for the best forex trading platform? Below you will find an in depth review & rating of the most popular trading platforms, including MT4, MT5, Currenex, ActTrader, droidTrader, iPhone and Android trading apps.

1. Metatrader 4 - MT4

Metatrader 4 is by far the most popular forex trading platform in the world today. It was released back in 2005 by Metaquotes Software and quickly became the traders’ favorite piece of software because of its user-friendly interface, variety of tech indicators, and auto-trading capabilities. MT4 client terminal is free for download. Everything you need to do in order to try it is to register a free demo account with a Metatrader forex broker.

Metatrader 4 (MT4) is the forex industry's favourite child. It is offered by most brokers on the market, the platform helps traders all over the world to make the most of their trading.

It is no coincidence that MT4 is so popular – the platform is simply good. Very, very good. It's interface is user-friendly and even novice traders can easily find their way around it.

MT4 comes equipped with an outstanding charting package: you can choose between line, bar and candlestick charts, nine time frames, 30 built-in technical indicators, Fibonacci retracements, trend lines, support and resistance levels, and so on – pretty much everything you need for the technical analysis of your trading. Fundamental analysis is facilitated of the integrated live news feed supported by the platform.

Traders who are handy with code can create their own automated trading strategies (Expert Advisors, or Eas), scripts and custom indicators in the MQL programming language. If you don't know how to code, or simply don't feel like it, you can download Eas, scripts and indicators from the platform's extensive library either free of charge or for a fee. MetaTrader 4 includes trade alerts, a handy tool to help you track the most favourable trading environment and market conditions. Backtesting is also an option with this trading platform, so traders can check whether a strategy works before they apply it to the actual market conditions.

Recently MT4 was upgraded to offer one-click trading and signal copying – two of the major trends in forex during the past few months.

Metatrader 4 is available as a desktop application, as well as Android and iPhone mobile apps.

2. Metatrader 5 - MT5

Metatrader 5 (MT5) is an upgraded version of the forex industry's most popular kid – Metatrader 4, however this platform has a slightly different target in mind: it is designed for trading commodities and stocks, rather than forex. Which is not to say it's no good for trading currencies – on the contrary. Metatrader 5 was released in 2010. However for the 5 years since MT4 release its fans built an incredibly exuberant ecosystem of EAs (standing for Expert Advisors, auto trading bots for Metatrader), custom indicators, forex signal solutions etc. Unfortunately MT5 wasn’t designed to support EAs and custom indicators, coded for Metatrader 4. MT5 features most of the goodness of its predecessor, and more – it comes with 79 technical analysis tools, 21 chart time frames, and the possibility to open up to 100 charts simultaneously.

Strategy-wise, MT5 is similar to MT4 as it supports all types of orders – market, pending and stop. There are two major differences from MT4, though: first off, hedging is not allowed. This means that if you open a long and a short position of the same contract size for the same currency pair, this will result in a zero position. Secondly, MT5 complies with the CFTC's FIFO (First-In-First-Out) rule. For instance, if you hold 1 lot long EUR/USD @ 1.3000 and then buy another lot EUR/USD @ 1.3200, you will see just one open position in your MT5 account: 2 lots long EUR/USD @ 1.3100. In case of closing just one lot, the first open lot is considered closed.

Traders wasn’t motivated to migrate to MT5 and refused to give up the old but gold MT4 platform. Almost 2 years after Metatrader 5 was established, only few brokers offer MT5 live trading accounts.

Many brokers still only offer demo MT5 accounts, but plenty also support live accounts on the platform - such examples are Vantage FX, Nord FX, LiteForex and of course, the best broker in Asia - InstaForex.

3. Currenex

Currenex is an ECN forex trading platform, actually the biggest spot fx networks around. if you are trading via Currenex forex broker, your trades are transmitted to a number of liquidity providers that the broker has agreements with via sophisticated trade matching technology.

Usually you need at least $20,000 to open an account with a forex broker offering Currenex trading platform.

Currenex is an online forex trading platform that focuses on connecting buy and sell side forex traders via electronic currency network (ECN).

With a Currenex forex broker you can trade spot forex , forwards, and swaps via Straight Through Processing (STP) technology. Currenex Inc, the Currenex trading platform developer, holds several patents on low latency execution technologies.

If you choose to trade with a Currenex forex broker, you will have access a deep liquidity, provided by finance industry giants like Deutsche Bank, Citi, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Credit Suisse, Bank of America, JPMorgan, Barklays Capital, Rabobank, Societe Generale, Morgan Stanley, RBS, and Dresdner Keinwort.

Currenex was designed with the more experienced traders in mind – the platform is not particularly suitable for beginners as they wouldn't know what to do with it. It features a variety of order types and execution algorithms, as well as advanced reporting tools. The platform is Java-based, so no installation is required.

What's best about Currenex is the partial order fill option, which displays the fill stages clearly and transparently, unlike other platforms supporting partial fills.

Some of Currenex forex brokers are FXCM, GFT, FXDD, CMS forex, and Alpari are listed as white label partners on Currenex.com, others claim to be provided with liquidity by Currenex.

4. ActTrader

ActForex is an online forex trading solution provider, founded by Ilya Sorokin in 2000. ActForex hosts its trading applications and licenses white-label platforms to clients profiting on trading transaction volume. Some of the largest retail forex brokers like FXCM, FX Solutions, and CMS all started as ActForex clients utilizing ActForex technology.

ActTrader is a full-featured forex trading platform that allow traders to customize workspace using tabs and detachable windows. Unlike MT4 and MT5, ActTrader comes with built-in One-click trading feature, that allows traders to open and manage positions in the fastest manner. ActTrader is not the only one trading platform, developed by ActForex. The company offers an Android trading app named ActDroid, ActPhone - trading app for iPhone, ActPad - trading app for iPad and ActWeb Trader - a browser based trading platform.

In 2011 ActForex launched FXApps, an app store for traders to find the best automated trading strategies designed exclusively for the ActTrader platform.

Recently ActForex released ActVat, an Visual Strategy Editor in the ActTrader platform, that allows you to automate your trading strategies directly from charts without writing a single line of code.

5. Mirror Trader

Mirror Trader is a forex trading platform, that uses cutting edge technology to provide traders with wide set of trading strategies. With Mirror Trader you can choose from three trading modes:

• Automatic Mirroring - With automatic mirroring users select their preferred signal provider(s), adds them to his/her portfolio, and all the trades of the signal provider(s) are automatically copied into the user's account. No manual confirmation needed.

• Semi Automatic Mirroring - You will be able to view all the strategies signals in real time and confirm manually only the trades you want to mirror to your forex account.

• Manual Trading - make discretionary trading decisions

Moreover, Tradency is the software provider of Mirror Trader – a sophisticated, yet user-friendly forex platform for trading live signals.

Mirror Trader is preferred by many traders for a couple of reasons: it offers everything a trader needs for their success, and it's intuitive and easy to use. Add to this the fixed-fee scheme, on which Tradency operates, and you can see the appeal of the platform.

6. Zulutrade Brokers

ZuluTrade is one of the oldest and most popular social trading platforms: established more than 6 years ago, today it hosts almost 20,000 signal providers and hundreds of thousands users trading these signals.

Up to date the platform works with about 60 brokers but this number is gradually increasing. The fees that traders pay for copying signals vary depending on the broker but do not exceed 3.5 pips per standard lot traded – and if you trade with ZuluTrade's own broker, AAAFx, you won't have to pay any commission for the trade alerts.

A share of these fees goes to signal providers – they get paid 0.5 pips per lot, which serves as a motivation for them to offer quality signals and attract more copiers.

Signal providers are also ranked according to the so called ZuluRank – a computer algorithm that takes into consideration a number of factors (trading strategy maturity, exposure, drawdown, reliability, etc.), and then arranges all signal providers in a leaderboard. All these details are also displayed in a signal provider's profile so that followers can decide for themselves whether they would like to trust this provider with their money.

A neat feature of ZuluTrade is ZuluGuard – a protection system that monitors signal providers for patterns of unwanted behavior and replaces unreliable signal providers with others who have similar trading strategies (this change is done automatically in the accounts of followers who have activated the ZuluGuard).

7. Android trading platforms

Metatrader 4 is undisputed leader among the desktop trading platforms, but Metaquotes didn’t develop a mobile MT4 for Android. Fortunately it was done by an innovative US based company, called Forex On the Go. Its droidTrader is the most popular forex trading platform for Android powered devices. It brings real time pricing, charts, and trading to your Android phone or tablet and allows you to access your MT4 trading account on the go.

However Metatrader 5 has an Android version, developed by Metaquotes.