"Your Time's Up MetaTrader?"– So Says Platform Community
Online trading platforms for the FX and CFD markets are entering a period of evolution as the once 'single platform'

Providers of trading platforms in the complex world of derivatives markets are preparing for an interesting period in the once monopolised market. With the recent changes being rolled out by one particular vendor, MetaQuotes, the once un-competitive platform market is opening up as traders and developers look for new venues to share their ideas and expertise.
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In an on-going quarrel with third party developers, and in an attempt to fight allegedly reoccurring hackings to its systems, Cyprus based MetaQuotes has been placing sanctions on firms that are collaborating with the vendor. And so, 3rd party developers have been creating interesting add-ons and plugins to complement platforms offered by MetaQuotes such as MetaTrader 4. The new restrictions mean that firms that have used technology to enhance the MetaTrader 4 platform are now in a state of limbo. In a recent round of withdrawals, MetaQuotes targeted firms that offer social trading solutions including; Zulu Trade, Tradency and Myfxbook.
Watch Out – Now
In a statement on MetaQuote’s support site, the vendor warned firms using the social trading providers:
Unfortunately, some third-party developers have hacked MetaTrader 4 trading platform’s network protocols violating end user license agreements and terms of contracts with brokerage companies. As a part of our active efforts to improve MetaTrader 4 system, we are starting to upgrade the network protocols and block all services based on the hacked versions. We urge you to cease any cooperation with ZuluTrade, Tradency, Tradeo, Myfxbook and other companies that use the hacked protocols violating our rights.
The world of online trading is constantly evolving from the early days of electronic trading, pre-millennium (2000) was the first phase when retail platforms were being launched where traders were lucky to have functionality that supported point and click trading only, let alone 1-click trading or advanced charting. Technology has been the ultimate driving force behind the growth in the FX markets as investors across the globe can easily access the $4 trillion a day market through electronic means. In the present time, platforms have evolved to be available on web and mobile, support algorithmic & automated trading and allow traders to use social techniques to share and understand trading strategies.
Since 2005, FX has been growing in both developed and emerging markets, novice traders were being introduced to the emphatic MT4 platform, thus creating a new generation of MT4 savvy traders. Brokers have also embraced FX via the MT4 route as a simple and cost effective platform that can easily be implemented and is ready to go.
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And The Winner Is…
Competition in the platform space has been a non-existent phenomenon as MT4 was standing in first place for a considerable period. Has the time come for it to step down, or is the market going to force resignation?
“Domination of the single platform is definitely at its end. This may come from the increasing risk, as evidenced in the recklessness of the last few weeks, or the increasing appreciation of open and fair platforms like cTrader, where we’ve seen our client base grow tremendously,” commented Ilya Holeu, Head of Sales and Marketing at Spotware Systems to Forex Magnates.
Mr Holeu adds: “More and more brokers are looking to diversify their technological risks on a single platform. We also recognize that the driving force behind the retail market has become a lot more sophisticated, and traders are now on the lookout for better and fairer technology that is not burdened by the negative aura that has surrounded the single platform.”
Platform vendors who struggled to get their platforms to gain traction among traders will view the recent changes as a critical opportunity, Raymond Deux, Founder and CEO of NinjaTrader a platform provider for the futures market feels there is room for him to enter the mega FX markets, he said in a statement to Forex Magnates: “When a single entity commands such dominance over a market it is inevitable that they will end up giving away market share. The FX space has always been very intriguing to me and is a natural path for me to grow our business. I feel that over the next five years, NinjaTrader will become very popular platform for FX traders.”
However with the market volatility expanding across different asset classes including commodities like Gold and Oil, traders have been keen to diverse their portfolio and have a ‘one stop shop’ sort of platform. Roman Nalivayko, Head of marketing and sales at PFSOFT, a multi asset provider from Ukraine feels that the market was already gearing towards a significant change, he says: “In our point of view the market is already moving in this direction and recent activities of the MetaQuotes company are only stimulating it: previous focus on one platform is shifting to other vendors. Also we saw this tendency in iFXExpo last week and in Integral FX survey.”
The social trading platforms have already given their response to the MetaQuotes changes and as mentioned by the platform providers, PFSOFT, NinjaTrader & Spotware Systems, whom we spoke to; the changes could be for the greater good of the industry and create a new buzz among platform vendors who can showcase their fancy functionality. The difficulty brokers and vendors will face is the re-education process which will be both costly and time-consuming, we are in a period of the MT4 boomers!
We feel that change is paramount in a technology driven market where firms have a short window to highlight their products. Traders have changed their behaviour during the last 15 years migrating from voice to electronic trading; it’s now time for us all to embrace the on-going changes.
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I will say that as a long term mt4 license holder we will stop opening new mt4 accts by end of year as we explore other more open honest and easy to deal with providers
MQ only cares about their support fee which they provide no support for
Frak Metaquotes! I’m glad i switched to Ninjatrader.
@Brandon – You should try tradable
TradeStation had a similar dominince in the futures and stock market 10-15 years ago when they popularized the idea of algorithmic trading accessible for the retail trader. They kept everything in-house, and eventually got extremely close minded about wanting to have outside brokers partner with their technology. They stopped listening to their clients and took long periods of time to implement the smallest of upgrades. Well, it didn’t take too long for MultiCharts to come along and eventually become a very formidable “open” competitor of TS. In forex, it will be similar but with a small twist. Instead of traders… Read more »
The change in the platforms for strategy development may come from another direction, the above comment assumes the art of strategy development will not change. The development environment is, except minor differences, the same in todays platforms, and target same group of developers. there isnt in reality much difference whether a strategy is developed in MT4, NinjaTrader,TradeStation, MultiCharts and similar development environments. The real change in this field may/will come, when the art of strategy development changes to also approach the majority of the potential developers. Traders out there having both the skills to program, to define a strategy, and… Read more »
The weird thing is that no mention about VertexFX, which is one of the most popular platforms with MT in far east and middle east!
In my opinion, vertexfx is a several light-years ahead of many current platforms including mt.. It contains huge amount of features and advanced charts…etc. most important, it is open platform, in their vstore i find large amount of plugins and scripts for free!
I believe forex magnets shall take a look to this!!
@Ron, can you summarize an article of this platform for us regular folk? I’m sure it would be a great time now to list the alternatives. Maybe an article could be done on alternative trading platforms or such.
@Ahmad VertexFX does have some very clever features, that’s why we (Abshire-Smith) offer it..
@Michael I can name over 100 brokers that offer the platform in the ME and Asia, though some are relatively small!
@Joe Band: can you list about 5-10 brokers? the ones who are the largest in your opinion.
@Jon , let me mention some of them as per my knowledge:
1) Abshire-smith (www.abshire-smith.com) (UK).
2) GTL Forex (www.gtlforex.com) (UAE, Australia).
3) BBCorp (www.bbcorp.com.lb) (Lebanon).
4) Ellipsys Markets (www.elpmarkets.com) (UAE, India)
5) VIBHS (www.vibhs.com) (UAE, India, New Zealand)
6) Success Trading (www.yoursuccesstrading.com) (Lebanon)
7) NDEX (www.ndex.com.np) (Nepal)
8) CFX Nepal (www.cfxnepal.com) (Nepal)
9) SanSZee (www.sanszee.co.uk) (UK, Pakistan)
10) Sword System (www.sword-system.com) (Kuwait)
@Ahmad – We did reach out to Vertex, I even followed up with the concerned person however sometimes firms are unable to provide timely responses. Rest assured, Vertex will be covered in an article in the next QTR report.
And you guys are correct they have a reasonable market share of the ME & South Asian market.
As a third part developer for several trading platforms, I’m a little bit concerned of spending hours of development and later to toss them to trash and look for another solution. I contacted vertexfx providers and they seem to be helpful and so I started developing plugins for traders whom using vertexfx. It’s quite interesting because of the fact that this platform seem to be responsive to every idea i come up with. A lot of features including which generate news ideas every now and then. For MQ, I several times contacted them for ideas to be developed but needs… Read more »
@Adil – This is Rima from hybrid solutions
We find contributing in Your Articles adil especially the one concerning our related field is a welcomed idea. i believe i have participated in all the suggested sent articles from you as we all find a benefit of sharing Vertexfx news that is already known to the public in our website , however apology if i missed any.
and always welcoming sharing VertexFX news through you.