When selecting a forex broker, whilst many offer dedicated and custom-built trading platforms, you will also find that many offer MetaTrader 5 as part of their service, too. This is because the industry-leading platform has several key features that make it a reliable trading hub, which customers can rapidly become familiar with.
From providing multi-asset capabilities, automated trading, and advanced analytics access, in this article, we’ll highlight a few of these essential features while also explaining what makes MetaTrader 5 stand out as such a reliable system.
What is MetaTrader 5?
Self-declared as the industry standard for both traders and brokers, MetaTrader 5 was released in 2010 and immediately regarded as revolutionary for the trading industry. For the first time, almost all financial markets were made available in one place and on one platform. The software has a version to suit every device, meaning that whether you trade from your mobile, tablet, or laptop, you can always access every service and feature wherever and whenever you need.
MetaTrader 5 essentially future-proofed the trading market, which is why, over 15 years later, it is still used by many brokers and traders alike. Its key features include the ability to trade almost every instrument on the market, including forex, stocks, Futures, and CFDs, all within the one platform. Many traders choose to use a broker that offers MetaTrader 5 due to its elevated automated trading systems, systematically allowing a trader to enforce their rules with regularity and keep a log of each transaction, giving them huge visibility of the performance of their strategy.
As it remains the industry leader, there are many brokers offering MetaTrader 5 available for you to review and ensure that they offer competitive and relevant spreads and trades on your key forex currency pairs.
Make the most of multi-asset capabilities in one platform
When we talk about the multi-asset capabilities of MetaTrader 5, we mean that the most practical advantage of the platform is its ability to unify your watchlists and monitoring alerts across multiple trading markets from within one single interface. No matter which instruments your trading strategy relies on, you will be able to operate across all of them from one platform.
This also gives you the added benefit of one single centralized account history and the ability to apply similar risk-management strategies across the whole market, with visibility on your successes and transactions available all in one place.
Internet message boards frequently list the ability to trade across the market from one place as a benefit of using MetaTrader 4 or 5, but with the most recent iteration, the software introduced some of the most powerful automations and analytics that the trading market has ever seen.
Other reviewers regard the ability to trade commodities such as gold, silver, and oil as a benefit to experienced traders who spread their investments across multiple markets as part of one unified strategy. Essential to the risk management of any trading strategy, MetaTrader 5 offers built-in stop-loss and take-profit orders, too.
MetaTrader 5 is home to the most advanced analytics on the market
In terms of the advanced analytics on offer for traders who use MetaTrader 5, there are almost 40 different technical indicators built into the marketplace systems, including trend indicators such as moving averages and oscillators like the Relative Strength Indicator. Additionally, you are able to track volume indicators and Bill Williams indicators, too, giving every trader access to almost every imaginable piece of data that can help hone and implement a winning strategy in the trading markets.
21 timeframes are supported by MetaTrader 5, allowing for deep market analysis and informing strategies with as much detail as possible, as 44 analytical objects are available to traders. The analytical objects include lines, Fibonacci tools, and geometric shapes to identify market trends. It is through a combination of these options that traders can quickly find the platform to be an unarguable element of choosing which broker to use for their trading requirements.
More experienced traders can customize these analytics further as well, using MQL5 language to create custom indicators and trackers essential to their strategy, but with over 100 different currency/stock charts available in-app simultaneously and immediately, there really is a combination of analytical tools ready for traders, both beginner and experienced.
Set up bots to automate trading strategies
Another key feature that traders swiftly rely on is the automated trading options available through MetaTrader 5. Also known as algorithmic trading, a trader can deploy bots on their account based on their objectives and budget to trade automatically, set on an agreed strategy. As the bots can also analyse the market and trade performance, they can actually replace human input entirely, so long as you are comfortable leaving your strategy entirely up to robots.
Most traders like to get familiar with the market for themselves before setting up a bot to replicate their strategy automatically, as this allows them to become confident in what works for them across their chosen trading instruments. However, beginner traders may instead choose to operate a copy trading strategy, which is also offered through MetaTrader 5. This allows investors to replicate trades being made by professional traders, available through the Trading Signals feature, and can automatically connect to the chosen signal, whether they are available for free or for a fee, and copy exactly the trades being made to your account.
A built-in economic calendar is another essential real-time feature offered by the platform, giving every trader immediate access to fundamental context and news feeds, which can influence and affect trading strategies.
Trade almost everything from one platform
Whilst MetaTrader 5 allows you to trade across multiple marketplaces in one place, its predecessor, MT4, focuses solely on the forex markets and is also widely available with brokers. These powerful platforms enable brokers to trade confidently, with their tools able to enact strategies precisely and automatically as required.
Making the most of the analytical tools and built-in economic calendar truly gives every essential piece of information and data to traders, all in the one place where they trade, and a unified multi-asset capability gives power to investors who want to track and enact their trades all from one place, wherever they are in the world and on whichever device they have available at that time.