Part 1: Mobile Trading w/Cingular IPAQ HW6515 Series PDA and IBFX MetaTrader 4 Mobile

The purpose of this paper is to share some information I gathered while trying to choose a Personal Digital Assistant / Cell Phone (PDA) for wireless trading with InterbankFX using the MetaTrader 4 Mobile Platform and the Cingular Wireless Network. These PDA’s phones are also known as Pocket PC Phones or SmartPhones. Some people use the term MDA, meaning Mobile Digital Assistant – which is the same thing as a PDA.

Wikipedia describes a SmartPhone as: A full-featured mobile phone with personal computer like functionality. When you see the term “Windows Mobile (SE)” it means Windows Mobile SmartPhone Edition. I found there to be a lot of gray area with regards to what constitutes a PDA Cell Phone and a SmartPhone.

According to this thread:
“Don't confuse the PDA's and the Smartphones. I have a Qtek 9000. It's a PocketPC phone. Both PocketPC and Symbian devices have real operating systems, while SmartPhones are just enhanced mobile phones with more advanced "operating systems" than the regular ones. Windows Mobile for PocketPC is not the same as Windows Mobile for SmartPhones. Due to this difference, it is very possible that Metatrader Mobile won't work on a SmartPhone.” – Bogdan http://www.metaquotes.net/forum/1606/ … Now of Course there is a MetaTrader SmartPhone edition available, but your broker needs to support it.

For the Record, InterbankFX only supplies the Compact Edition (CE) of Mobile Trader, aka MetaTrader 4 Mobile for the MT4 platform , and does not supply the SmartPhone Edition (SE), aka “MetaTrader 4 Mobile SE”. Also, currently the older Mobile MT3 Platform is not supported by InterbankFX. Please correct me if I am wrong. This paper does not cover the SmartPhone Edition features and issues.

Updates: According to an InterbankFX representative, when there is a Mobile Platform update available the updates are bundled with all the MT4 Platform updates to the Broker (at least that is what I was told). It seems more reasonable that any update will be made available as soon as it is released, but I have to assume the representative knew what he was talking about.

See http://www.metaquotes.net/downloads/ for download sizing information. Make sure to download from your Broker, not the MetaQuotes site, as the Broker will have resolved Server addressing issues for you when you download from them.

Forthrightly, I will unabashedly and unapologetically say that I like trading with InterbankFX and that is the focus of the information. That said, most of this information is usable with any Broker that provides the MetaTrader wireless / Mobile trading platform, however, IBFX is my Broker of preference, and this information is geared towards making IBFX work on a Mobile device.

Wireless Connectivity and the MetaTrader 4 Mobile Platform
In order to use the MetaTrader 4 Mobile platform you will need a PDA with wireless connectivity. If you are a PALM OS fanatic, please feel free to write your own paper on its usability, as this information is for IBFX and the Windows version they provide. The MicroSoft term “Windows Compact Edition (CE)”, often seems to be used interchangeably with ther term “Windows Mobile” operating system, so don’t be put off by it.

I chatted with InterbankFX concerning the Cingular Wireless Service and what devices they would recommend for their Mobile Traders. They recommended either the Cingular 8125 or the Cingular iPAQ hw6500 PDA phones.

Of these two choices, the focus of this paper is the iPAQ 6500 series, running an Intel 312 MHz processor. Hewlett Packard (HP) introduced the first iPAQ PDA Cell phone in 2004, aka the 6300 series. Now we are up to the model HW6900.


The Quick And Dirty, Low Down / Run Down Of The Metatrader 4 Mobile Platform As Of This Writing:

1. Reliable.

2. It cannot run any EA’s or a Custom Indicators - period. MetaQuotes has no intention of making Custom Indicators or EA’s available for the MT4 Mobile Platform. This is their quote: “About MQL4 support (ie Expert Advisors and Custom Indicators support): for now we are not planning to do it. At least not in MetaTrader 4 Platform. ~ Lenar

3. Great for emergency trade shutdowns or new trade placements.

4. A Trade placed on the Mobile Platform will show up on your Desktop Platform. However the Mobile platform will not activate a trailing Stop on the Desktop, even though it is active on the Mobile Platform: http://www.metaquotes.net/forum/2315/

5. Only runs the indicators that are provided with the program, for the charting.

6. Operating system requirement: MS Windows Mobile 2003 CE, or better.

7. Required: Screen size 176х220 or higher;

8. The distributive (the download) is 400 Kb, and unpacked to 1 Mb. It must also be noted that some additional memory will be needed to pump historical data. 5 Meg of Free Memory must be available.

9. Having downloaded the MetaTrader 4 Mobile , you get:
- the full set of trade orders;
- symbol charts;
- Market Watch;
- history of trades;
- news in the real-time mode;
- alerts;
- mailing system.

10. How to Download Data: Just try to scroll back into history. When you reach the left side scroll more and the data will be downloaded.

11. You cannot stop an EA running on a Desktop from the Mobile Platform.

12. MetaTrader 4 Mobile Version for Meta Quotes. Source: http://www.metaquotes.net/mobile_terminals/

13. Screen Shots: http://www.metaquotes.net/mt4mobile_screens

14. Support of 30 technical indicators, among them are Alligator, Bollinger Bands, Ichimoku Kinko Hyo;

15. Sound alerts - there is no need anymore to watch PDA frequently, alerts will inform about changes in the market. Note: The Mobile Platform will not generate an Email Trade Alert – only a Sound Alert.

16. Trailing Stops are a technology that allows you to drag the current Stop Loss level (SL) of the order automatically following to the moves of the price in the direction of increasing the profit of the order;

17. VGA-mode the support of which allows to see much more information on the PDA display having 640x480 resolution. ?? I didn’t understand this.

18. Multi-language support allows to switch between the languages of the mobile terminal interface and work with all features of the terminal in the users native language.

19. “Access to News flow allows you to make reasonable decisions considering the latest events at the world financial markets. “ There are various complaints in the various Forums about News trading. Apparently news arrives too slowly sometimes.

20. There is some indication that if you are constantly using GPRS for the Mobile Platform, you will drain your batteries fast. You may want to invest in an extra battery. In one thread it was recommended to use a GPRS monitoring utility: http://www.metaquotes.net/forum/1606/ “GPRS gives you total freedom of movement. WiFi is a limited freedom. Works only in the hotspot.” And “Returning to the speed problem, GPRS should be good for MetaTrader Mobile. It doesn't uses too much (kind of 4 MB / 8 hrs).” Bogdan was a wealth of information. Thank You! You Da Man! Everyone ought to review this thread if you are planning on going mobile.

21. “Pocket Mechanic is a MUST. Internet explorer's cache grows. Also, MT4 Mobile creates some logs which consume the storage. These files have to be wiped out. (Two weeks ago, when MT4 wasn't at build 190), there were no news available, and my pocket RSS could not update the news when I needed. Friday I was at home, but I saw the payroll number 5 minutes after it was released (on www.dailyfx.com) - that may be too late)” – Bogdan.

22. One gets the impression that there may be more data lag via GPRS data delivery.

23. Data costs can wreck you. Make triple sure you are signed up with a data plan before turning loose the Mobile Platform, otherwise ….


The MetaTrader 4 Mobile Userguide can be downloaded at:
http://www.metaquotes.net/files/meta...4mobile_en.chm (CHM file, 586 Kb).
If you can’t read it follow this solution to unblock the file: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/9022...1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

MetaQuotes In-House Survey of Mobile Users: (Interesting)
http://articles.mql4.com/346/?source=mobile.poll.tsd

End Part 1 - Techguy
Link to Part 2:
http://www.forex-tsd.com/metatrader-...-4-mobile.html