What is the best CFD trading platform?
People can use many types of instruments for trading. On the one hand, there are assets that can be directly bought and sold on the market like Forex pairs, commodities, and more. On the other hand, there are instruments that allow people to trade above-mentioned assets but not actually own them.
One of such asset types is called CFD (Contracts for Difference). CFDs have already become pretty popular among traders, that is why many brokers incorporate them into their platforms. But instead of offering two separate trading platforms for direct assets and CFDs, the brokers tend to combine the two types of instruments into one single platform.
The majority of brokers do not have dedicated trading software for CFDs. They include these instruments in their regular platforms, whether it is MetaTrader, cTrader, or their own WebTrader.
In this guide, we will review two of the most popular CFD trading platforms: MetaTrader 4 and cTrader.
Trade CFDs with these platforms
MetaTrader 4
As mentioned in the introduction, MetaTrader 4 is by far the most popular and widely-used trading platform among the two CFD trading platforms in our list, as well as in the industry as a whole. That is because it was created almost 15 years ago and traders have become used to its functionalities.
When it comes to the quantity of tradable CFDs on the platform, it varies from one broker to another. However, there is one universal rule that applies to all brokers: MT4 has a strict limitation for how many instruments they can put in it - it can go as high as 1024 instruments in total.
And as mentioned earlier, many brokers tend to offer CFDs alongside other instruments like Forex pairs, commodities ets. Usually, the brokers integrate around 200 Forex pairs into the platform, as well as hundreds of commodities. For this reason, these brokers may not be able to integrate a large number of CFDs on MT4.
To see exactly which CFD instruments are included on the platform, traders can go to the View menu at the top-left corner of the screen and check out Symbols. There will be a separate CFD section that will include different Contracts, whether it’s on indices, stocks, currencies, etc.
One of the biggest benefits of trading CFDs on MT4 is its Expert Advisor (EA) feature. Traders can use EAs to automate their trading activities, allowing the software to open, close, and even modify the positions based on the initial directives from them.
Not only that, the platform has a big selection of technical indicators both pre-installed on the platform and available for a download on the internet. These indicators, categorized as trends, oscillators, Bill Williams, etc, enable traders to analyze price movements and make certain predictions about the future. For this reason, MT4 is still among the best platforms to trade CFDs.
cTrader
cTrader is another pretty popular trading software that has also been on the consumer market for a while now. Brokers use this software for trading Forex and lots of other instruments, including CFDs.
One of the biggest
differences between cTrader and MT4 is in the number of instruments available on the platform. While MT4 has a certain limitation to the tradable instruments that can go up to 1000 symbols, cTrader doesn’t have any restriction like that. As long as the server can handle it, the broker can incorporate as many tradable CFDs as it wants.
It is also pretty easy to find all of the available CFDs on the platform. On the left side of the screen, there is the All Symbols window that contains every tradable asset on cTrader.
Now, if we compare cTrader to MT4 in this sense, there will be lots of differences between them, including the design of the platform, as well as the speed at which traders can open/close positions. However, there are quite a few similarities as well. For example, there are quite important trading indicators and tools on cTrader that are useful in CFD trading, whether it’s cBots, social trading (also known as copy trading), and many more.
