Review of cTrader Forex Trading Platform

January 6, 2016

By Taylor Wilman

cTrader is a Multi-Award Winning, Multi-Asset Class CFD trading platform by Spotware that emphasizes that their entire business model and product was engineered with a single priority; putting traders first. Even though this trading platform suite has been available for 5 years already, there is a chance that you might not have tried it yet. With many brokers offering it worldwide and an unlimited lifetime demo account is available from the developer’s website; there aren’t many reasons not to have tried this awesome training solution!

ctrader platform

Non-Dealing Desk

One of the nicest things about cTrader is the true non-dealing desk environment. Since Spotware connects the cTrader platform directly to your broker’s liquidity provider or aggregator using the FIX API, there is no possibility of intervention. All aspects of the platform use the most modern technologies available and the server-side is no different. These modern technologies provide an incredible experience. The platform processes orders asynchronously and has the capacity to handle hundreds of orders per second and unlimited price updates from your brokers price feed to show you a truly accurate and real-time depth of market. These same reasons are what have made cAlgo a go to choice for Algo Traders.

Cloud Based

Spotware provides a cloud based trading experience, which allows you to access your preferences from literally anywhere. cTrader Web offers all of the same features as the desktop application and lets you access your account from any modern web browser and even from your mobile phone. You can store your favorite symbols, chart templates and entire workspaces. The cloud trading experience also lets you receive email notifications about a number of activities which could happen in your account.


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Trading Indicators & Charting

cTrader offers over 80 default indicators and chart objects on all applications, including the mobile phone apps. From any interface adding, moving and removing objects is easy and simple. The charts are fully customizable, in terms of zoom, time, color, size and much more. With the desktop application you can detach charts from the application to view across multiple screens as well as other elements like pending orders list or history.

cTrader Technology

cAlgo has become a popular choice because of the technology behind cTrader. As mentioned, cTrader will process order simultaneously, as opposed to other platforms which will place all orders into a queue. Traders are also able to see available liquidity at all times, which gives them a deep insight into market conditions and aid with forecasting. Another reason of why it has become popular is that it uses c# programming language for creating cBots and custom indicators. c# is a very well-known programming language. Because it is not a proprietary API there is a lot of resources available to learn about it, since c# is used in many non-trading circumstances. It is much easier and cheaper to find freelance developers to create robots for you.

While cAlgo is integrated with the Microsoft Visual Studio, the application serves as an all-in-one algorithmic trading solution. cAlgo provides the ability not only to trade, but includes a built in code editor alongside back-testing and optimization capabilities, meaning a single application is all you require. Working from one application allows you to configure your parameters, test and run your robots easily, simply and quickly.

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Customer-Driven Updates & Numerous Instruments to Trade

Spotware provides regular feedback driven updates, as demanded by their end user with recent updates including  Price Alerts, Custom Margin Call Alerts and completely free chart movement added. Traders can submit or vote for their favorite features on vote.spotware.com. Additionally traders can send feedback or trouble shoot from inside any of the trading platforms. Over the past couple of years cTrader has seen more and more asset classes being introduced and now the platform is supporting hundreds of stocks from across the world, along with indices and iShares ETF’s. There are currently only a few brokers who are offering such a massive range symbols, but you can see them inside the Spotware demo version.

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Ease of Use

The cTrader platform has been designed incredibly well. Even if you are new to the platform or to trading it will not take you long to get used to cTrader. Most things that you will want you can find in at least 3 places, in the chart objects toolbar, by right clicking on the chart or in the application menu. The color scheme is very simplistic and informative and the interface is free of clutter. You can switch the color scheme to light or dark, depending on which you prefer. By default all orders are shown on the chart, you can easily drag and place stop losses, take profits and other pending orders, as well as cancel them. A variety of modifications to orders can be done, just by moving its visual representation on the chart. If you have a lot of pending orders or deals and find this clutters the chart you can easily disable it.

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cTrader uses a fair stop-out algorithm to protect traders from total wipe out in the event their margin becomes too low. This works by closing a position not based on which is most unprofitable but which one is using the most margin. By closing positions in this manner it will provide the opportunity for the other positions to bounce back. Whereas methods employed by other trading platforms work against the traders interest.

cMirror – Social Trading

One of the newest applications which was released by Spotware is cMirror. This is a mirror trading or social trading platform which boasts a lot of key differences between other similar products on the market. Firstly it is hosted on the same infrastructure as the trading servers of every broker, meaning the issue of latency between strategy provider and investor will be as unlikely as possible. It is one of the most informative mirror trading platforms and provides a very deep insight into performance when you are searching for a strategy to follow. cMirror is also the only mirror trading platform which allows strategy providers to decide on what their strategy is worth. There is no induction or review period to become a strategy provider, meaning anyone can get started straight away.

Conclusion

Looking at the facts; cTrader is definitely the better choice of all trading platforms out there. The technology behind the system is truly superior, the interface is helpful and easy to understand, the company behind it done a great job helping to make the world a better place for traders.

You can download an unlimited lifetime demo account from spotware.com, launch cTrader Web here, or download from the iTunes Store or Google Play Store.

About the Author:

Article by Taylor Wilman, an experienced trader and forex research writer that also writes on trading strategies and forex patterns.