Written by Nikita Buzhor, content specialist, on behalf of Exness.

Forex trends are the most important tool for the Exness mt5 trading platform, thanks to which can determine current trends, that is, the direction of the price vector of a particular financial instrument.

There are three types of trends: descending (bearish) — with such a trend, it is necessary to sell; ascending (bullish) — in an uptrend, you need to buy; missing (lateral trend, flat) — it is better to refuse to conduct trading operations.

Each of these forex trends has a different period of existence. Typically, a short-term trend is considered over a period of seven days. For a long-term trend, a period from one month to a year is selected.

Trend trading not only provides a potential opportunity to make good money on a strong price movement but also represents trading along the path of least resistance for the price since the trend that has begun is likely to continue.

What Is an Online Trading Platform? How Do Online Stock Trading Platforms Work?

For successful transactions on the stock exchange, it is necessary not only to correctly select financial instruments but also to prepare from the technical side of the process. Investors and traders should be able to quickly and easily find the required asset, get information on it and make a deal without unnecessary clicks.

Also important is the convenience of tracking your own investment portfolio. Information should be read simply and clearly. All of the above in various forms are offered by stockbrokers. However, there are special trading platforms for active traders and investors.

Today, in essence, everything still looks like this. However, the rigid interdependence between the equipment of the exchange and the trader has disappeared. Exchange programs are created completely separately by site specialists or ordered from third-party developers. At the same time, the ability to connect to any trading platforms should be maintained.

All platforms for trading on the stock exchange can be divided into two large categories:

• Broker exchange terminals;
• Universal exchange terminals.

The first is developed by the brokers themselves for their clients. An investor or trader, by opening a brokerage account with a broker, gets access to its program.

The second ones (universal exchange terminals) are created by independent third-party developers. They are used by both brokers themselves and traders. At the same time, it is worth noting that it is most profitable for brokers to create trading platforms on their own.

What Can Make a Trading Platform Outstanding Among Others?

Failures in the work of the exchange or brokerage programs are rare today. However, they can have an extremely negative impact on open transactions and traders’ portfolios. For this reason, in trading, there are criteria by which a platform for work is chosen.

The most important parameter is the stability of the terminal, survivability, and absence of failures. The more deals are made at the same time and traders participate in trading, the higher the load on the network and servers of the trading platform. As a result, there are small delays and a lag in the transmission of up-to-date information. As they say, time is money.

A good trading terminal supports pending orders, orders (orders), and other functions. Such operations should be performed automatically according to the set scenario when the established conditions match.

For example, to sell certain shares if their price rises or falls to a certain value. If there are no such options, you will have to constantly monitor the schedule and perform all operations manually.

The convenience of the interface is a purely individual factor. It is much more pleasant and faster to work with a program in which all the buttons are located intuitively and there are no constant doubts about the tasks of certain tabs.

A nice feature is cross-platform. It is understood as the presence of versions of one program immediately for a computer, mobile device, and sometimes a web terminal. All of them are interconnected.

For example, you started transactions in a mobile terminal, and in the evening you logged in from your computer, looked at the daily history of transactions, and continued transactions with shares. Some traders find this opportunity extremely convenient.

What Shall the Trader or Investor Pay Attention to While Choosing a Trading Platform?

In recent years, trading has become very popular, and many unscrupulous companies have begun to parasitise this.

Such companies either claim to belong to a large organisation or an investment fund in the US/Europe and in most cases, they completely deceive about the period of their activity on the market. It is these pseudo-brokers who create a negative image of trading, showing the simplicity of this process and by all means luring an inexperienced client to open a deposit.

Especially often, such companies offer over-the-counter trading: Forex, CFDs, cryptocurrencies, or even binary options. This area is very poorly controlled, requires much less initial investment, and provides a huge scope for deceiving customers.

What Features Are Offered by Modern Trading Platforms?

We put the functionality of the trading platform in second place. If at the right moment it is not possible to simply send an order, then who needs “super-indicators” and other “bells and whistles” then? By the way, pros in any field usually use specialised tools for different tasks rather than “multi-tools”.

A trading platform for trading US stocks should allow a trader to:

• Track quotes;
• Send orders (limit, market, stop);
• Keep track of your positions and completed transactions. Actually, everything.
• The rest (charts, filters) is often solved by additional tools.

Conclusion

The beginner does not always pay attention to this important nuance. Not all companies or dealers call a spade a spade and often, under the pretext of trading in securities, the client is offered the option of buying and selling CFDs (Contract for Difference), which is only a derivative of the underlying asset.

In the field of OTC trading, it is generally impossible to be sure that you are gaining access to the real market, and many novice traders fall into the trap of unscrupulous companies.

For example, there are platforms that first process the client’s request on their server (and perhaps then the request does not go anywhere, which allows you to show the client not always the real situation on the market, interpreting it in your favour).

[Image – Photo by Dylan Calluy on Unsplash]