Witnessing a daily turnover of about $6 trillion and over makes the forex market a behemoth. Irrespective of your knowledge and experience, entering the forex market requires access to a reliable forex trading app. The best forex apps deliver features such as access to a wide variety of currency pairs, real-time data, robust charting tools, as well as sophisticated security measures.
The increase in the use of mobile devices has made forex trading apps more popular. Almost all of the major platforms have one or two mobile apps to supplement their websites. The advent of these apps has revolutionized the way traders engage with the markets by making it easier for anyone to access the forex market at any time and place.
What is a Forex trading app?
A forex trading app is an application that facilitates the buying and selling of forex and other financial instruments on mobile devices. These apps are usually free and can be proprietary or third-party developed. They offer several features including displaying real-time market data, buying and selling instruments, depositing and withdrawing funds, displaying news and analysis as well as price alerts. Most are easy to set up and great for beginners.
This article seeks to provide insight into the top 5 mobile forex trading apps that traders can take advantage of.
- MetaTrader 4 (MT4)
The MT4 is a software platform and mobile app developed by MetaQuotes Software mainly for trading the forex market. It provides advanced charting tools, technical indicators, and backtesting options. The Metatrader 4 is endowed with a one-click usage templates, customizable charting package, automated trading options via EAs (Expert Advisors) and supports a wide range of Forex and CFD brokers. Its drawbacks include limited asset coverage, outdated technology, limited time frames, and less sophisticated custom indicators and EAs (Expert Advisors) due to its older MQL4 programming language. Collectively, the MT4 mobile app brings advanced trading features to iOS and Android devices, making it popular among forex traders.
- MetaTrader 5 (MT5)
The Metatrader 5 is a trading platform also developed by MetaQuotes Software. It provides expanded functionality and greater cross-market ranges when compared with its predecessor, the MT4. The MT5 also supports 21 timeframes with one-minute resolution charts inclusive. It has several benefits not limited to versatility and better performance, the support of multiple financial instruments, wide range of technical analysis tools, as well as hedging. However, it is less popular than MT4, has a smaller user and developer community and its advanced features can sometimes be a challenge to amateur traders.
- cTrader
cTrader is another powerfull trading app designed for forex and CFD traders. The platform was launched in 2011 by UK brokerage Spotware and offers professional tools for smooth trading experiences. The cTrader app provides a customizable and clean interface, Level II Pricing data that offers insights into market depth, and a complete set of drawing and technical analysis tools. For traders who may be looking for professional-grade trading experiences with optimized execution speeds, cTrader is an excellent option. Its unique Level II pricing data makes it an ideal platform for active short-term traders.
The advantages of cTrader include an intuitive and easy-to-use interface, powerful visualization and charting tools, Level II pricing data that provides insights into buyer/seller activity, and optimized execution speeds that deliver fast order fills.
Nevertheless, the disadvantages of this app have to do with its connection to specific partner brokers and one is only able to use it when connected to such brokers. This gives it a less extensive user community and limited learning resources.
- NinjaTrader
It is a trading platform fashioned purposefully for professional traders. It offers advanced analytics and trade execution and allows traders create dynamic charts with hundreds of indicators, analyze price action using drawing tools, and backtest automated trading systems. The benefits include advanced analytic tools, customizable workspaces, a strategy backtester, and pre-built indicators. The cons of this app are that its steep learning curves are not always suitable for traders, limited mobile automation, and a need to connect to supporting brokers. Overall, it’s an excellent choice for experienced traders seeking advanced features across desktop and mobile environments.
- TradingView
TradingView is a social networking platform for traders with very powerful charting and analysis features. It provides an ecosystem for trading ideas, insights, and discussions with about 30 million users and over. Advanced interactive charts, broker integration, a vibrant trader community, customizable layouts, drawing tools, and built-in news feeds are a few of the features it has. The focus of this great app is on building a trading community and this makes it a top choice for both short and long-term traders. The pros of this app include the flexibility of its charts, integration with a vibrant trading community, customizable workspaces, feature-rich free version, and data syncing across devices. The downside is that it requires broker integration, and the quality of community content significantly varies. Again, there may be stability issues with analyses and scripts sometimes, and advertisements are on the free version.
