Contemplating using MetaTrader to trade on Forex

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: SherlockEinstein Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/57770 License: CC BY-SA 3.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. (Apologies if this is off-topic. I checked through meta and it seems that this should be on-topic.) I have been thinking about using MetaTrader4 programmable trading platform to trade on the Forex. For the uninitiated, MetaTrader provides free software for creating Forex trading robots and technical indicators. The company says however (at the bottom of their homepage ) that they are a "software development company" and that they do "not provide any kind of investment or brokerage services in financial markets". So the question I wanted to ask is: do you also need a Forex-trading account with some investment bank that provides remote access for the MetaTrader4 software to connect to?

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: davmp Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/57835 License: CC BY-SA 3.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. My understanding, given I don't use MetaTrader myself, is that you need to have a broker account that supports MetaTrader. Like their site says, they just provide the framework software for the robots & indicators. Some brokers then have done the licensing and work to allow MetaTrader usage on their platform. So you will need to find and create an account at a brokerage to actually execute the orders / provide the market data streams.