MetaTrader 5 has been under development for two years and beta testing will finally begin this summer. MT5 is a complete rewrite of the MetaQuotes platform and is not backward compatible with MT4. So if you purchased expert advisors to trade on MT4 and you plan to use MT5, you might as well throw those MT4 EAs away. They won’t work on MT5.

MetaTrader 5 offers several new features that may make it necessary for retail traders to adjust to new terminology and, possibly, a new way of thinking about order processing and trade management.

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First, a new order type – Exchange – will now enable trading of stocks, futures and options directly from the MT5 platform in addition to the Forex order to which MT4 traders are already accustomed.

The addition of Depth of Market data, which I mentioned in my previous post, will also give traders access to market data previously not available.

Traders will also have to get familiar with the differences between how MetaQuotes is defining position, order, and trade. An Order is now defined as a request to execute a trade operation. A Position is the total state of trades on a specified financial security; and a financial security can only have one position. So, two 1-lot EURUSD orders placed in MT4 are now reported in MT5 as a single 2-lot position. Multiple buy-sell orders in MT4 are consolidated and reported as a single position in MT5.

I’m sure this will inspire lots of conversation about hedging as traders try to understand how this will impact their trading.

MT4 gave the trader 9 timeframes from Monthly down to 1-Minute. MT5 gives the trader 21 timeframes with which to analyze quotes as long as the timeframe adheres to their rule of multiplicity: one hour must contain the integer number of minute periods. So, the following timeframes comply with this rule: M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, M10, M12, M15, M20 and M30.

There is lots more to talk about with this new release. Next, MT5’s impact on autotrading.