Brokers & Platforms

A trading platform is the software layer between you and the market: it charts price, routes your orders, and tracks your positions and margin. The big three in retail and prop trading -- MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, and cTrader -- differ in the details that matter mid-trade: which order types they support, how partial fills and netting are handled, what their charting and backtesting can do, and how reliably they execute under fast markets.

For funded traders the platform is usually chosen for you -- each prop firm supports specific platforms, and your challenge runs on the firm's infrastructure rather than a personal brokerage account. That makes the practical questions educational ones: how to read the platform's margin and equity figures against the firm's drawdown rules, how to set default stop and size templates so every order respects your risk plan, and how to verify execution behaviour on a demo before an evaluation.

These guides explain platforms and execution mechanics from that angle -- what you need to understand to operate any of them competently, not which one to buy.