This week I've been focused on the upcoming MetaTrader 5 release but other things have still been happening in the Forex world.

Here's what happened on Turtle Soup this week:

 Monday, 8th
George Soros said that China's influence will grow faster than expected

Tuesday, 9th
GAIN Capital's FOREX.com Named Best Retail FX Platform by Profit & Loss Magazine for Second Consecutive Year

Wednesday, 10th
Alpari launches forex trading platform in India
Persian Gulf Monetary Union Agreement is finally signed
MT5 Series Part 1: MetaTrader 5 Offers Market Depth Data

Thursday, 11th
Crown Forex appeals regulator bankruptcy ruling
MT5 Series Part 2: A Sneak Peek At MetaTrader 5

Friday, 12th
Oanda Loses Alexander Shirokov to CIBC
MT5 Series Part 3:Bigger Profits With MetaTrader 5 Expert Advisors

Next week, a video interview with Stanislov Starikov, the chief developer for MetaQuotes' MQL4 and MQL5.

The long-awaited release of MetaTrader 5 is just around the corner and, believe me, it will be well worth the wait. There is no upgrade path from MetaQuotes' MetaTrader 4 trading platform to MetaTrader 5.  MT5 is a brand new platform and expert advisors, custom indicators, scripts or autotrading robots that run on MT4 will not be compatible with MT5.  

MT5 has a new integrated development environment called MQL5 which includes MetaEditor 5, MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester and MetaQuotes Language 5 (MQL5).  



Execution speed is everything when developing autotrading scripts that sometimes need to crunch huge amounts of data in conjunction with real-time price movements. The new MQL5 boasts up to 20 times faster execution speed than the current MQL4 language that is used to develop custom EAs and indicators for MetaTrader 4.  

MetaQuotes has made significant improvements and enhancements in MQL5 over MQL4 that autotrader developers will probably appreciate much more than the average trader but will ultimately benefit the retail trader just as much.  MetaQuotes has made MQL5 an object oriented language which, for programmers, makes the development of EAs quicker, easier and more flexible. The MQL5 programming environment incorporates intellisense which, as most techies would agree, speeds up the development process.  It also has a built-in debugger for testing.

MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester is the built-in test harness for expert advisors.  It enables a programmer to stress test a newly developed EA on historical data before releasing it to a real trading environment. Strategy Tester features a "beefed-up" reporting facility that not only detects weak points in an EA under development, but also compares its test results to other EAs. This makes for more accurate and efficient code and therefore, better autotraders.  The expert advisors and custom indicators produced by MT5 will be faster, more accurate, and more profitable.

Next, and interview with Stanislav Starikov, the chief developer for both MQL4 and MQL5.

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.

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.

Order	Buy 1.00 EURUSD	Buy 1.00 EURUSD	Sell 3.00 EURUSD
MetaTrader 5 Position	Buy 1.00 EURUSD	Buy 2.00 EURUSD	Sell 1.00 EURUSD
MetaTrader 4 Position	Buy 1.00 EURUSD	#1 Buy 1.00 EURUSD #2 Buy 1.00 EURUSD	#1 Buy 1.00 EURUSD #2 Buy 1.00 EURUSD #3 Sell 3.00 EURUSD

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.

Everyone has been waiting for the release of MetaTrader 5 and now we've had our first glimpse of the new platform and its features.  The new MT5 platform is not an upgrade of MT4 but rather an entirely new client terminal, written from scratch.  As I wrote in a previous Forex Magnates post, MT5 will feature:

• 5 order types and 4 execution modes available for trading
• Implements practically any trading strategies
• Built-in reports on all trading activities
• Built-in indicators and graphical objects
• Allows quicker analysis of quotes and trade decision making
• 3 chart-types, 21 timeframes and over 70 analytical tools
• High performance and outstanding speed
• Strategy tester MetaTrader 5

Over the next few days I will try to explain in some depth what these features really offer the trader and the impact it will might have on your trading.

Today, I'll focus on MetaQuotes' new Depth of Market (DOM) window. What DOM affords a stock trader is a view of current market activity for a particular stock. Market depth information is not available for retail Forex traders because their is no central exchange from which to derive the data.  The best a Forex broker can do is provide a mechanism to show a consolidated view of available orders from their liquidity providers. A small broker, for example, with only one liquidity provider is more restricted in what they can offer a trader.  Since their pool of orders is smaller, the trader may not get an order filled at the price requested.  A broker with more liquidity providers will have a larger pool of orders from which to match a trader's order and trading generally runs smoother.  Fewer requotes and less slippage.

Tradeview Forex's Platinum trading platform offers DOM information, but market depth data has been generally unavailable to retail traders up to this point.  MT5 will change all that.  Here's an example of how it could help you as a retail trader.

Let's say that you want to place a buy order for 1 lot EUR/USD and the market depth window on the platform indicates that, on the buy side, there are 10 lots available at 1.4000.  You can then request to trade your 1 lot and be guaranteed an immediate fill at 1.4000.  There's no requote and no slippage.  You should then see the DOM window reflect the change in buy-side order availability.

Access to that kind of information can take a lot of anxiety out of the trading environment and potentially change a lot of traders' strategies.

Tomorrow, more about MT5's 21 timeframes and how this feature could make a big difference in your trading.

CMS Forex has finally launched VT Trader 2.0, its long-awaited upgrade to VT Trader.  For MetaTrader 4 users, VT Trader 2.0 presents a different type of user interface, which features trading directly from a chart.  A user can point and click to open or close positions; drag and drop to move stop and limit orders; and zoom in or out to view overall trends.

The platform comes with more than 100 technical indicators in addition to an Indicator Builder tool which enables traders to build their own indicators from scratch or modify existing ones.

InterbankFX supports a chart pattern recognition tool called AutoChartist which runs separately from IBFX's MetaTrader platform, but VT Trader 2.0 has chart pattern recognition technology integrated into the platform.

By default VT Trader 2.0 includes a number of automated trading systems. However, the built-in Forex Autopilot technology automates traders' strategies by enabling them to setup Forex trading strategies and automaticaly generating trades based on those systems. Once a trading system is configured, VT Trader 2.0 will automatically open and close positions at specified parameters. These parameters can include price levels, moving average crossovers, and even technical indicator levels.

For MT4 traders, the VT Trader 2.0 platform certainly has a different look and feel.  It has so many options and ways to configure the platform and so much information on the desktop that it could be confusing for some traders.  However, the folks at CMS added, not only floating and/or dockable windows, but also the ability to hide windows when they are not in use - a useful feature if all you want to focus on is the chart.

One additional feature that I really like, especially for the novice traders I tutor who think in dollars and not in pips, is the ability to place orders on monetary values rather than currency prices. The platform allows the trader to set stop and limit orders based on their monetary profit target and maximum acceptable loss without the need to set specific target prices. For example, a trader can tell the system that the maximum loss they are prepared to incur is $200 and their profit target is $500. When the trader clicks to enter the order the limit and stop orders are set.

Taking everything into consideration, I really like this platform. Again, being an MT4 junkie, it would take me a while to adjust to the new interface but I just might give it a test drive.  A tutorial video is available on CMS Forex's website.