To trade Forex, you’re going to need a trading platform. You’re also probably going to need a separate, additional charting platform. Those two things may sound like almost the same thing, but they’re not. Trading platforms in online Forex do provide you with charting capabilities, but their main purpose is to help you interact with your broker by placing orders. Their secondary compatibility is charting, which means that they aren’t that useful for a lot of charting activities like backtesting. For that you’ll want to download some additional software. Even the top Forex brokers don’t really have the most amazing charting capabilities in their trading platforms.
Since you’re not really going to find magnificence in a broker provided trading platform, you should be willing to settle for something which is transparent, easy to understand, and easy to use. Beyond that you should probably be most concerned about the speed of your broker’s connection and the speed at which your orders are processed. A slow connection will result in some serious slippage in some cases. Slippage is when your order gets filled at a different price than you expected. This can result in lost trades.
Likewise, other factors about the broker in question should play a bigger part in your decision. For instance, is the broker regulated? This better be a “yes.” Do they offer you the lot sizes you want to trade? Do they provide the leverage you want to use? Can you reach customer service by phone, IM, or email? How do you deposit and withdraw money? What are their reviews like? What currencies do they allow you to trade in? What kinds of fees and interest rates do they charge? How wide are their spreads?
So if you do find a broker and a trading platform you’re interested in going with, spend some time testing both. It’s not enough to glance over it and mess around and say “good enough for me.” You need to demo test for a while using the same trade rules which you backtested (you backtested, right?) and plan to trade live. The top Forex brokers allow you to demo test indefinitely until you feel comfortable with their platform and with your own system. Even if you’ve already demo tested for a long time somewhere else—heck, even if you’ve traded live somewhere else—spend some time testing on the new trading platform! The last thing you want to do is find out you’ve lost real money because you didn’t understand how to exit a trade fast enough. This also gives you a chance to try accessing customer service. The top Forex brokers will always respond to you instantly.
That other thing you’re going to want to download (long before you even get to the demo phase) is charting software—some of these programs will place orders for you with brokers too, eliminating the need to interact with the broker’s platform. Some popular charting platforms include XTick, TradeStation and MetaTrader 4. These programs display dozens of currency pairs, allow you to plot indicators which are included in the program, load in indicators which aren’t, create or import templates, and more. You can scroll backwards through years of data on all of the timeframes, and use your charting software to backtest a system. By moving your charts forward one candle at a time with your chosen indicators, you can make decisions as you would in real time, and see how your trades would’ve turned out based on historical data. It’s only once you’ve achieved profitability in these theoretical backtests that you should move on to demo testing.
When you’re demo testing, you’re either going to be placing trades on your broker’s trading platform or through your charting software. But many traders still prefer to use their third party charting platforms to plot trades and make decisions, just as they did while backtesting, even if they place the order with the broker directly. This is both due to the capabilities of the charting software, and also the fact that it’s best to stick to what you’re used to. If you tested hundreds of trades on historical data in MetaTrader or XTick, it’s usually best to plan your demo tests in the exact same manner using the same program, particularly since there’s slight timing discrepancies between the data on different feeds. Then you simply use the trading platform to execute the decisions you made using your charting platform. Good luck finding the best charting and trading platforms, take your time, and go live only when you’re prepared!
Our area of action is a programming MQL language for the Forex Trading platform MetaTrader 4. We also offer a ready-made set of scripts, expert advisors and indicators.
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