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The Best Forex Trading Platform​

How to find the forex terminal that’s perfect for you​

Forex is pretty demanding — trends and prices change on a dime and sometimes you have only seconds to react. You need a reliable and convenient tool that will help you process the data and make the right decision in time. In other words, you need a trading platform — and there are quite a lot of those.

With this article you will:

• Explore the most popular Forex trading platforms;
• Find the one trading platform that suits you best.
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MetaTrader 4

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Release date: 2005
Developer: MetaQuotes
Platforms: Windows, Linux (via Wine), MacOS (via PlayOnMac), iOS, Android
Website: MetaTrader4.com

Most African traders use MetaTrader 4 — and there’s a good reason for this. Despite being more than a decade old, it is still well-supported both by the developers and the third-party brokers.


UI

The main window consists of the charts and indicators, while the buttons and menus are crammed to the sides of the screen. The interface of the terminal is user-friendly and efficient.

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Features

• Trading automation. You can buy trading algorithms on the Market or write your own with MQL4 script language.
• Trading signals. With MetaTrader, you can receive trading signals from prominent traders to improve your own trading.
• Full Forex orders variety. MetaTrader 4 supports Market Orders, Pending Orders, Instant Execution, StopLoss, TakeProfit and other order options.
• Interactive charts. 30 indicators, 23 analytical objects and 9 timeframes make sure that you can analyze your trading strategy and improve it in the future.

Unlike broker-specific tools like TradingStation, MetaTrader is universal. If you switch to another broker, you won’t have to re-learn the platform itself.

Conclusion
It doesn’t matter if you run Windows, Android or MacOS — Meta Trader 4 will work on your device and provide all necessary trading features. It is a global standard for the Forex traders and will work perfectly for all newcomers.

NOTE: There is also a MetaTrader 5, but it’s not really popular. MetaQuotes themselves conceded to that and backported the best features of MT5 to MT4, so don’t even bother with it.

However, MetaTrader might not be up to everyone’s taste. Here are some alternatives you might want to look at.

Ninja Trader

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Ninja Trader is a predecessor and competitor to MetaTrader, released in 2003. It has similar features and much worse compatibility — but it does bring something new to the table.

One thing that really makes Ninja Trader stand out is the presentation. Order Flow Representation and a more detailed Depth of Market view are sorely missing from MetaTrader and would be great to see in the future updates.

Ninja Trader is a Windows-only application and you can’t even run it with Wine if you’re using Linux. The support was dropped around 2 versions ago, and even then it was far from perfect. There also aren’t any mobile versions, so unless your primary trading machine is a Windows PC — Ninja Trader is not for you.

cTrader

cTrader on Microsoft Windows
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cTrader is what MetaTrader would be if it was released ten years later. It is practical, powerful and incredibly polished. You can see that the developers were, at the very least, inspired by the MetaQuotes’ software and did not try to fix things that weren’t broken.

However, there are some issues. Due to the fact that cTrader uses its own programming language, you are stuck with a much smaller selection of the Expert Advisors. Also, a lot of brokers simply do not support cTrader yet, due to it being relatively new.

cTrader is available on Windows, Android and iOS, with Linux and MacOS versions being semi-viable via Wine. They work, but you will have much better experience and far fewer bugs on the three primary platforms.

Overall, cTrader is bound to become the new king of the market — but it is not there yet.

Conclusion

If you are new to the Forex, finding the perfect trading platform is hard — but now you at least know where to start. To sum it all up:

• Use MetaTrader if you want to learn to trade and get transferable trading skills;
• Use Ninja Trader if you use Depth of Market data often;
• Use cTrader if you are a fan of slick modern interfaces

And if you still can’t make a decision — just ask your broker what you should use. And don’t forget to subscribe to JustForex newsletter to learn more about Forex trading!