News

It's the 1st of June - the date of official release of the new MetaTrader 5 trading platform. Now you can purchase the new online trading platform for your company, expand into new markets and offer even more services to your clients.

Development of the new platform started 3 years ago (development of MetaTrader 4 took 20 months). From the outset, MetaTrader 5 was conceived as a multi-market platform that would be able to operate on forex and on any equity market. This was a new problem for us, but we tried to solve it the best way.

Work on the new platform started from scratch, and for these three years we have written 1.1 million code lines (MetaTrader 4 consists of 0.6 million lines). That's why the result is so impressive: the new MetaTrader 5 has new trading system, distributed architecture, high performance and flexibility. This is a new terminal for traders with an extremely powerful environment for developing Expert Advisors - MetaQuotes Language 5 (MQL5). Generally, the new platform excels MetaTrader 4 in all terms.

Even at the platform design stage, we understood that serious testing would be needed. First, the platform was subject to severe testing within our company. Then we launched the program of multi-stage testing. It started in September 2009 and was scheduled for 5 months. However, this was not enough, and we decided to extend the testing period till June 1. As a result, today we are pleased to present you and your customers the convincingly stable and highly functional platform.

While working on MetaTrader 5, we kept consulting with different brokerage companies and stock exchanges. In April 2009, we held a three-day workshop inviting representatives of brokerage companies from all over the world. This workshop was held to discuss problems of the trading platform development and different aspects of using MetaTrader 5. This meeting brought many benefits to our development team enabling them to best implement brokers' wishes.

"We've done a great job over the last three years, and we're planning to do even more. I hope brokers and traders will appreciate our efforts, and MetaTrader 5 will be a new standard on financial markets," - Alexander Saidullin, head of the Trading Platform departments said.

I hope MetaTrader 5 will be a new standard on financial markets!

We in MetaQuotes Software Corp. do our best to develop stable and powerful software and to actively promote it. Lately we've launched the MQL5.community - a specialized website for Expert Advisor developers. The website already features articles on MQL5, hundreds of Expert Advisors and indicators, we are preparing to publish the new MQL5 tutorial. This year we're going to hold the 4th annual Automated Trading Championship 2010 for promoting the new programming language MQL5.

MetaTrader 5 is the new revolutionary software designed for financial markets. The platform retains its basic functions and additionally offers new features that will help your company stand out among your competitors. With MetaTrader 5 you will be able to offer your clients the new client terminal, powerful automated trading and will allow them to operate in various currency and equity financial markets. Order MetaTrader 5 and be the first to offer these new possibilities to your clients!

Today we have released the beta version of MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester. This program is the integral part of the MetaTrader 5 Client Terminal being designed for the purposes of testing and optimization of MQL5 Expert Advisors.

With the testing you can assess the qualities of your Expert Advisor on history data before launching it in real trading. Optimization allows choosing the most profitable parameters for your Expert Advisor making it a real efficient one. The Strategy Tester is an indispensable tool for developers of Expert Advisors. It is almost impossible to develop a profitable an error-free Expert Advisor without the tester.

As compared to the tester in MetaTrader 4, the new MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester is a more powerful and accurate tool. It has obtained the new function of distributed optimization that will be useful in work with compound Expert Advisors. Besides that, the Strategy Tester offers efficient testing of multi-currency Expert Advisors.

"The Strategy Tester is the last component from the set of required tools for efficient development of Expert Advisors. This set also includes the MQL5 Language, MetaEditor, debugger and execution module in the MetaTrader 5 terminal. The absence of a tester was the last obstacle to the wide possibilities provided by the MQL5 environment. We hope that together with the release of MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester, the number of new MQL5 Expert Advisors will sharply increase", - Stanislav Starikov, the senior developer of MetaTrader 4/5 terminals and MQL4/5, said.

Seven months have passed since testing of the MetaTrader 5 platform started. The first stage of it implied closed testing among the most active members of the MQL4.community. On the second stage we officially published the terminal - its public testing started. Together with that, back-office components of the system were also tested.

So now we are ready to render a report on what has been done. Since the start of the testing, we have received about 1,000 bug reports and crash logs on the entire platform. While fixing these bugs and crashes, and implementing your suggestions, we've released about 100 builds of the MetaTrader 5 Client Terminal, MetaEditor and the MQL5. Bug reports on the testing of back-office components also were of great help, and allowed releasing of over 60 builds of server components.

Now we would like to thank all of you who participated in this testing. Your help is very valuable for us. "We've released over 150 builds on the whole - that was really much. After all this joint job, the platform has become stable enough, so that soon we'll officially release it," - Renat Fatkhullin, CEO of MetaQuotes Software Corp. said.

We've launched a new website - MQL5.community, devoted to the trading strategy programming language MQL5. We are always attentive to your comments and suggestions, and the start of the new website is another step to meet your wishes.

The website is similar to MQL4.community. It also contains MQL5 Documentation, articles on automated trading, code base and the forum. Later we will publish the MQL5 Book by Sergey Kovalyov.

You can also take an active part in the life of the MQL5.community. You can communicate with other members on the Forum, publish your Expert Advisors on the Code Base, and share your knowledge in paid articles. We will pay not less than $200 for an article.

Besides that, soon we will introduce new services and sections on the website. The forthcoming Automated Trading Championship 2010 will be conducted on MQL5.community. We hope, this will be helpful both for traders and developers of Expert Advisors, while MQL5.community will be even more popular than MQL4.com.

Today the public testing of the MetaTrader 5 client terminal starts. All of you now can participate in it. If you want to become the testing participant, just download the terminal and test it. You can send your bug reports and suggestions by email or publish them in this topic.

For the testing period, the client terminal is offered with the English interface. If you have any difficulties, please refer to the built in Help, which is also in English.

We thank you in advance for your contribution in testing the MetaTrader 5 terminal!

Plans for MetaTrader 5 Testing

1. The platform testing will take about 5-6 months.
2. This will be a step-by-step testing. New possibilities will be added at each step. During the first testing stage that starts today, the client terminal will work only with Forex. Further we will add CFD, Futures, equities and options.
3. The current terminal version is offered without a strategy tester. It will be included at next steps.
4. From November, 2009, we open the testing of back-office components of the platform in brokerage companies.

We do our best to offer you the maximally stable product, that's why the testing process has a multi-step structure. We want to thoroughly check everything before we offer the platform to our clients.

Best regards,
MetaQuotes Software Corp.

The 9th of September is an important date in the history of the MetaTrader 5 trading platform. We are in the final stage of the platform development - it is the starting day of the closed beta-testing of the MetaTrader 5 terminal.

The new client terminal has been sent to some members of the MQL4.community for testing. They will help us find errors that unfortunately always accompany the developments of new products. Being created from scratch, MetaTrader 5 is not an exception.

We have conducted the diverse testing of the MetaTrader 5 terminal in our testing department. However, we decided to conduct this closed testing, so that finally the general public is offered the reliable, trouble-free terminal. The closed testing will be followed by the public beta-testing; and all persons interested can participate in it. Follow the news!

April 1-3 2009 the MetaTrader 5 Workshop was conducted in Kazan. Technical specialists of some of our clients were invited to this event. The main purpose of the meeting was the discussion of the MetaTrader 5 platform that is currently being developed.

Our company was represented by Renat Fatkhullin and Alexander Saidullin, as well as heads of all international offices of MetaQuotes Software Corp. We invited representatives of brokerage companies from all over the world and special guests.

The following issues were the subject of discussions during the meeting:

1. Architecture of the MetaTrader 5 platform.
2. Further development of the platform.
3. Using MetaTrader 5 in stock markets, as well as for trading futures and options.
4. Back office, integration with TeamWox and other software.

The platform and its presentation were shown at the MetaTrader 5 Workshop.

According to the results of the meeting held, the following decisions have been made:

1. In summer 2009 we are planning to start the public beta-testing of the MetaTrader 5 client terminal and the new language for programming trading strategies MQL5.
2. In autumn the beta-testing of MetaTrader 5 back-office components will be started.
3. The main efforts of MetaTrader 5 developers will be concentrated on the maximal flexibility of the platform. "Our platform must be able to easily integrate with the largest possible number of other software, stocks and liquidity providers. This is one of the most important tasks we are going to work on", - Alexander Saidullin, the chief developer of MetaTrader 5, concluded.

We would like to thank all those who came to the Workshop and participated in the discussion of the new platform. We are sure that now we will be able to make MetaTrader 5 maximally convenient for the business of our clients.