You Think MT4 (Metaquotes) is Competitive?

You think you stand a chance attempting to trade with MT4/5? This is not a complaint just information sharing.
On one hand conditions like this:

Quote

Disliked

Urgent Action Required on MT4

Against today's news like this:

Nothing really new here, just thought I would share this info, quite laughable actually.
For newbie's, as a retailer, your one and only option using MT4 and MT5, (or any platform for that matter) is to study and work with longer time frames.

Appreciate the topic itself but imho the thread title and the poll question are already formulated in a wrong (and mis-leading) way. A better question would be:

Do you as a retail trader think you can be profitable with any retail trading platform?

To answer that question a trader first needs to understand why exactly almost 100% of retail traders do not achieve that goal. I'm not talking about 95%, I mean 100%. The reason is not a company like MetaQuotes or a platform like MT4, the true reason lays much deeper. An average retail trader would fail with any platform offered to him, even with a professional one (if that's possible).

ps: I voted "Yes".
pps: I think the thread is in the wrong forum.

MT4/5 has enormous flexibility for scripting custom indicators and automating trading systems, which is the primary thing that makes it attractive. But it is fundamentally bucket shop software -- the server side isn't even capable of ECN trades (brokers that offer ECN accounts have to add their own custom software).

The top things I hate about MT4/5:

1. Severely limited chart TFs and styles. Dukascopy's JForex is light-years ahead in their charting flexibility (I don't like that it is coded in Java, but that's off topic). If you want 27-second charts, 3-tick charts, point-and-figure charts, you got it. MT4? Forcing us to use M1, M5, M15..., c'mon that is so 90's.
2. Tick data not stored or available for download. Multi-megabit internet connections and terabyte storage are the norm nowadays, but MT4/5 is still designed for 28.8 kbit dial-up modems. MetaQuotes had a chance to make this right when they rolled out MT5 but they blew it.
3. The client-server architecture is specifically designed for bucket shop operations. The broker takes the opposite side of the client's trade, and that opens up the possibility of the broker fudging trading conditions to the disadvantage of the client.
4. It doesn't support the industry standard FIX API.
5. That awful grid. Go view some Tradestation graphs to see what a real grid looks like.

The way of the future is decentralized direct trader-to-trader transactions, no broker involved. So far, only the big banks trade this way. The retail trader is at a disadvantage because he doesn't have access to the actual depth-of-market (DOM) information that they have. Crypto-coin technology may open up new possibilities for Forex trading that will give individual traders a level playing field, but we're still waiting.

To answer the OP's original post, MT4 was designed with longer term trades in mind (ten years ago the "standard" spread was 3 to 12 pips, which placed a heavy cost on shorter duration trades). It has adapted reasonably well to day trading and some scalping but its simply not capable of HFT.

A relative newcomer Forex platform is cTrader, you might want to check that out. That supports FIX protocol, which may give you the faster speeds you need, the downside is that automated trading algos need to be programmed in C#. There is at least one thread here on FF that discusses cTrader in detail, search for it. Check out FXPig.com as a FIX broker, several members here have spoken highly of them. Disclaimer: I've not personally worked with either cTrader or FXPig, so this should not be considered my endorsement.

Net Net
Waiting for decentralized exchanges to arrive. cTrader may become a viable alternative to MT4, but the C# language requirement is an obstacle. As for now, still stuck with MT4.