Many will definitely remember how Alice fell through the rabbit hole and found herself in a new world, full of new and hitherto unknown possibilities.
Talking about the possibilities of the MT4 and MT5 platforms, these platforms possess a whole host of such holes: one just has to look at the bookmarks at the bottom of the terminal. One of them is called ‘Market’, which perfectly reflects its function, since it leads to a shopping center, in which the shelves are full of hundreds of products, all of which are very useful for those calling themselves “traders”.
To be more precise, the online store on the mql5.com portal currently offers more than 5000 products, amongst which there are more than 700 indicators, 400 robot-advisers, scripts and other programs, as well as dozens of specialized books and journals on various financial topics.
The official opening of the MetaTrader Market occurred in the start of 2012 and by the middle of last year more than 6300 ‘products’ had already been sold on that market, with their cumulative value exceeding half a million dollars. The amount of sellers offering products on this market is approaching one thousand, whilst the number of buyers has already far exceeded 25000. In my opinion, these rather commanding figures make obvious that this hypermarket possesses truthfully useful and essential tools for any trader.
To be honest, I am not a big fan of paying money for anything, and prefer downloading various advisers free from the internet. On the other hand, I would like to stress that not even one – not one! - of my free advisers has delivered me so much as a penny of profit. Moreover, having seen two or three deposits go down the drain I realized that it is time to put a stop on experiments with my own wallet, and decided to take an introductory tour of the MetaQuotes ‘Market’.
Why did I like it?
1. Because it is quite easy to sort products by categories. For example, ‘MT4-advisers- popular, new, free, paid’ (notice, the market also offers free advisers!). Having gone through this chain of filters you can easily find what interests you personally.
2. Because there is a substantial amount of information on every product, which is not limited just to ‘sample’ fragments of statements or authors’ descriptions, but includes also full data on online-monitoring and comments from traders who have either already purchased or simply tested a given adviser or indicator. Such information is vastly more objective than promotional texts, which aim simply to praise the product of the seller.
3. Because prior to purchasing an advisor or an indicator you can test them absolutely for free. This also provides us with two numbers that enable us to evaluate the quality of a given product: the count of how many demo-versions have been downloaded as opposed to how many actual purchases have been made (activations). Let’s assume, for example, that 1000 demo-versions have been downloaded, after which 1000 actual purchases have been made we can safely say that the given product has satisfied the needs of traders by 100%, both in terms of quality and in terms of price. If, on the other hand there have been 0 purchases then one should definitely decide against acquiring this adviser or indicator.
4. As has already been mentioned, I am quite stingy (or greedy) and dislike throwing around my money. For this reason “Market” has become quite attractive to me since one can, instead of purchasing, can… rent the products offered for a month, half a year or a year. Rent-test-like-buy. Do not like-forget: the loss is not big at all!
5. One more relatively minor, but extremely pleasant feature is the ability to dispel myths. Amongst traders there exists a legend that if you buy an adviser priced at 10, 20 or 30 thousand dollars it will definitely end up being the ‘Holy Grail’ that will grant you multiple millions. Here it is apt to remember Alice and the Wonderland in which she found herself in at one point in her life. So that you do not find your mind wondering off to Wonderland and that it stays, instead, in reality ‘Market’ allows you to satisfy your curiosity by testing advisers priced at tens of thousands of dollars absolutely for free. I am not going to berate them, nor am I going to praise them. Simply test them and decide for yourself on whether they are worth your money or not.
Finally, allow me to poor a couple of spoons of tar into this barrel of honey (what can we do without them!)
Spoon #1: The average purchase price on “Market” is around 85 USD. This is, of course, not several hundred or even several thousand, but it is still a hefty sum. Therefore, prior to completing a purchase I strongly recommend making use of all the services ‘Market’ offers for the evaluation of a product’s quality.
Now, Spoon #2: As claim the makers of this service, the key concept in ‘Market’ is Activation. In other words, buying a product, you are not buying a product (with apologies for the mediocre rhyme) but instead you are (quote): “acquiring the right to use it an unlimited number of times, but on a limited number of computers (devices?). One activation means that you can use a product on one computer without any constraints. You will be unable to download a copy of the product onto another computer, and manually copying the file onto another machine will similarly result in it not opening.”
What can one say? I think that those who are familiar with the term ‘copyist’ can now give a sly smile. Especially since those ‘copyists’ can also be purchased on ‘Market’ without any problems whatsoever.
Believe me: I am not calling anyone to do anything. I am merely trying to compare the arguments ‘for’ and the arguments ‘against’ from the perspective of a stingy trader. The truth, as per usual, lies somewhere in the middle, and when we find it we certainly be able to save (and possibly earn) quite a large amount of money.
