cTrader is an ECN forex trading platform developed by the Spotware company. Since its launch, cTrader has become a preferred platform for several major ECN brokers, such as Pepperstone, and a serious competitor to the popular MetaTrader platform.
Visually, the cTrader platform is extremely clean and inviting. The designers have made great efforts to make intuitive and easy to use.
cTrader is the first retail forex trading platform to offer three types of market depth (order book).
Standard depth allows you to see liquidity providers' aggregate quotes, which is useful as it helps traders become familiar with the market's dynamics.
Price depth shows the liquidity available at each price.
VWAP (Volume-weighted average price) depth shows the average price traded over a specific time period.
Market orders: market orders are executed on the basis of the best available price - if the liquidity that is available at the best price is insufficient for the requested order, the second best price is used to fill the remainder of the order, and this continues until the entire order is filled. A VWAP price is displayed in the confirmation message.
Limit orders and stop orders: limit orders are useful to buy or sell a currency pair when the exchange rate reaches a specified price in advance.
The trader needs to specify the target price and desired volume he or she wants to buy or sell for the order to be automatically executed once liquidity becomes available for that price.
If the available liquidity is insufficient to cover the requested amount, the limit order is partially executed.
Protection: all orders can be secured by defining a maximum accepted loss (a stop loss), a take profit level, and, for limit orders, you can set a date/hour when the order will expire.
QuickTrades: QuickTrades buttons are very useful for scalpers, as they can reverse or double positions and execute orders very quickly with just one click.
cTrader's charts offer 26 timeframes and 6 zoom levels to adapt to all trading strategies. A double click at the top of each chart let's you place an order very quickly.
The platform has all of the tools you need to perform technical analysis (trend indicators, oscillators, volatility measures, etc.) It is also possible to create custom indicators via the cAlgo algorithmic trading platform.
All of the charts can be detached and act as a standalone desktop application. While other platforms only show the average price or Bid/Ask lines, cTrader shows both buy/sell lines on each chart, as well as the entry points and stop loss and take profit levels which can be modified directly on the chart.
For short-term traders and scalpers, cTrader can display charts in ticks with a new bar for each tick or an aggregate view that has up to 55 ticks per bar.
The cAlgo platform - which is integrated into cTrader - enables you to create trading robots and personalised technical indicators, in a manner that is highly similar way to the Expert Advisors used on the MetaTrader platform.
The cAlgo platform supports both C# and the .Net Framework via the cAlgo or Visual Studio editor. The C# programming language has an advantage over MetaTrader's MQL: there are many more programmers who are familiar with this language.
cMirror is a mirror trading application that enables traders to share or sell their strategies and trading signals with others. These others (traders and/or investors) are able to automatically copy their strategies to their own trading accounts.
The platform is available for mobile devices and tablets, which means that there are versions for both Android and iOS. These mobile versions contain many of the features that are available in the desktop version. In addition to the mobile version, there is also a web version that is very favourably comparable to competing offers. cTrader therefore provides all of the necessary tools that are needed by traders who want to remain connected to the markets around the clock.
Trading Central continuously monitors over 7000 assets. Each day, analysts offer their investment strategies for a variety of asset classes: stocks, indices, currencies, commodities and interest rates.
Trading Central data - which indicates likelihood of scenarios - is fully integrated into the cTrader platform. Trading signals can be created quickly to adopt the direction of the most probable scenario, including the Take Profit and Stop Loss levels suggested by Trading Central.
You can test the cTrader platform for free and without any commitment whatsoever by opening a demo account at Pepperstone. Even if you're used to trading with Metatrader 4, the order execution speed and intuitive interface you'll find with cTrader may surprise you and you may even want to switch to it
Conclusion
cTrader is the main retail forex trading platform that could seriously challenge the MetaTrader 4 and 5 platforms' market dominance. The ability to see the market's depth is appreciated by many traders. MetaTrader 4 has become very popular because of its automated trading features and its community of traders who devote their time to creating Advisors Experts for the platform. As of this year, cTrader doesn't have a community like that yet, but the platform is one of MetaTrader's biggest competitors, as an increasing number of traders are switching to cTrader for automated trading.