In a forex brokers and trading platforms jumble
Once upon a time, I was a happy forex student. I paper traded on Oanda for a few months and even opened a live account with them. Then my work place tightened up our internet firewall at work. I couldn’t access market data anymore during the day. Fortunately, Dukascopy at the time said that they’ll be enabling micro-lot trading. So I moved to practice with Dukascopy. Then last weekend, Dukascopy said no micro-lot trading on their Metatrader 4 accounts. I move to another broker again.
My last stop (so far) is at MB Trading. However, after practicing with them for a week, I remembered why I didn’t go with them in the first place. They don’t offer Canadian denominated account currency! Fortunately, they do say that they’re in the process of enabling more account currencies. But who knows how long that might take?
My head is spinning from all this mess. I don’t think I am asking too much from a forex broker. I just want five features from them.
- good reputation
- micro-lot trading
- Metatrader platform
- free API access
- Canadian dollar denominated account currency
That’s all! Why am I being shut out everytime just when I am about to open a live account?
On top of that trouble, there’s the question of which trading platform to use. Over the past few months, I have tried many forex brokers and their forex trading platforms. From proprietary ones like FXTrade (Oanda), JForex (Dukascopy), and Dealbook 360 (GFT) to the popular, third-party Metatrader 4 platform.
I decided to settle with Metatrader 4 because its charting is sufficient and scripting on it is fairly easy. I learned MQL4 (MT4′s scripting language) in a few hours and wrote my first EA in a few days.
The problem with Metatrader 4 though, is Metatrader 5. Scripts written for MT4 is incompatible on MT5. As I intend to trade semi-automatically via expert advisors, this is a huge problem for me. I don’t want to start developing for MT4 and only to have to convert everything again.
I thought I could evade this MT4-MT5 dilemma with a non-American forex broker (Dukascopy) as they’re more likely to stay with MT4. But now that I can’t trade with them anymore, my best potential broker is MB Trading. Which is probably upgrading to MT5 once it’s out. Note: MT5 is built for new NFA regulations, so American brokers probably have to upgrade.
I think I have had enough moves for now. So screw this all! I will focus on learning Python programming for the next few weeks. While waiting for MB Trading to adopt Canadian dollar accounts (or I come across a new broker), and the duel between Metatrader 4 and 5 is settled.
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