ForexSpace.com - From its birth in 1998, the Alpari Family has expanded at a phenomenal pace. This impressive growth is driven by the Alpari commitment to exceptional customer service, innovative technologies, comprehensive trading tools and educational services. No wonder, therefore, that is has become an industry leader, numbering over 440,000 client accounts in over 150 countries, monthly trading volumes in excess of 210 billion USD1 and 650 employees worldwide.

In line with an ethos of innovation and excellence, the Alpari Family has just launched the live MetaTrader 5 platform, boasting market depth and one-click trading, courtesy of completely new software designed by MetaQuotes Corp. Although many of the smaller brokers are already offering MT5, it would be no exaggeration to describe the market as having been waiting with baited breath for Alpari - considered the leading Metatrader players, and thus a barometer of MT5 attractiveness - to start offering it.

One of the key attractions of MT5 is how it allows retail clients to experience the benefits of trading on institutional platforms. “What this means,” explains Andrey Vedikhin, (pictured) Alpari Group co-founder and the CEO of Alpari UK, “is that traders will receive a vast amount of information on real-time market liquidity through Depth of the Market. Clients will be able to analyse order volumes and base their decisions on the liquidity they see in the market.”

Vedikhin has boundless enthusiasm; he’s passionate about his product and keen to share with me how MT5 is so much more than an upgrade of its predecessor, MT4. “It is a revolution in the world of Forex, precious metals and CFD trading,” he says: “In order to take full advantage of this powerful trading device, we at Alpari believe traders will need an experienced, technology-driven broker by their side that has the scope and commitment to empower its clients in this new world of trading.”

The key benefits of MetaTrader 5 trading with Alpari include:

·         Non-dealing desk (NDD) execution with access to multiple liquidity providers (bank liquidity)

·         Direct market access (DMA) and market depth to analyse market liquidity

·         One-click trading and no requotes for speed of execution

·         Spreads from 0 pips and up to 1:500 leverage

·         New order types and advanced order expiration types including “fill or kill”

Crucially, the MT5 Strategy Tester allows traders to test and optimise EA strategies in minutes rather than hours. In order to do this, traders use historical data to find out how well a particular EA strategy would have performed in the past. This is the so-called backtesting.

“Many tests and strategy modifications are necessary before an EA is ready to be applied to a live account,” explains Vedikhin. “The Strategy Tester gives traders access to a remote computer cluster and the calculation capacity of thousands of computers all over the world to accelerate the optimisation process.”

Additionally, new order types (Stop Limits) and order execution strategies (“Fill Or Kill” and “Immediate Or Cancel”) will allow traders to use advanced trading strategies and tools which were previously available only on institutional platforms. In terms of MetaTrader5 being truly the next generation of automated trading strategies, Vedikhin says how one of the main reasons why MetaTrader 4 has become one of the most popular Forex trading platforms in the world is its Expert Advisor (EA) functionality. “Alpari is an EA-friendly broker and more than 80% of our clients use EAs,” he says. “With MT5 EA programmers will get access to the most advanced and powerful language MQL5 – a revolution in the history of online trading. The release of MQL5 widens the gap between this technology and that offered by the competitors, making it almost impossible for others to repeat success of MT5 in the nearest future.”

And there isn’t a thing with regard to EA   trading that can’t be realised with MQL5, says Vedikhin. “

If you’re programming your own EAs, you’ll literally find no limits but your own. You can even build “intelligence” into your EAs and use graphical objects that interact with each other – it’s actually all very similar to C++.

“While backtesting is of paramount      importance to EA traders,” Vedikhin continues, “there has never been a quick and easy way of doing this. It’s such a complex task, requiring many tests on multiple scenarios with a large amount of historical data. The new MT5 Strategy Tester now cuts the time it takes to

backtest an EA from several hours or even days to minutes. It allows traders to test their strategies not just on their own computer but on a cluster of thousands computers based all over the world. The complex task of testing and optimising EAs is broken down into digestible chunks which the computers in the cluster can complete in minutes, saving the programmer valuable time and making the process highly efficient.”

Finally, another facet of significance, especially for retail and less practiced traders, Alpari offers MT5 on the new ECN account that requires a minimum deposit of just USD 200. For trades opened and closed by 1 July 2012, Alpari will charge no commission. From 2 July 2012 commission charges will apply. 

For more information on the Alpari Family and its latest MetaTrader5, visit www.alpari.co.uk

Drew Hillier. Editor