There are pretty much zero brokers out there who offer
actual futures trading on MT4
***. But besides, you wouldn't want to trade futures on MT4 in the first place, so even if you found one I wouldn't be able to recommend it.
The main reasons (as per why MT4 and futures don't mix well):
- MT4 Server isn't designed to work with the CME's exchange model, or ICE's exchange model for dollar index contracts you mentioned. It's just not designed to be used for trading with direct access to these exchanges.
- MT4 lacks a native depth of market or "ladder".. and lacks the ability to place orders within the depth of market. Currently, the few brokers who offer a depth of market for FX related products have to rely on 3rd parties, and often this is just for displaying info at best.
- MT4 cannot cleanly keep track of all the futures symbols available to trade. I don't just mean that there are a lot of different things to trade in futures (and there are,) but in Futures, contracts come with an expiry date. Often, they expire every 3 months or less, and roll over to new traded symbols (thus a new entry in MT4) each time. Given all the various futures products, multiplied by all their respective expirations, the little market watch window in MT4 would be overrun.
- Futures each have their own contract specifications (cash settled, physically settled, quantity, etc), daily closing times (they do not all close their days at the same time), electronic hours, pit hours, break sessions, various levels of margin, tick values, etc... MT4 just doesn't have the facility to keep track of nor display this info.
(I know that list can make futures sound complicated.. and in some ways they are, but don't let it scare you. Leverage should scare you, not contract specifications.
Once you settle on a futures product, getting your barrings isn't hard at all.)
(Side thought, even though the next version of Metatrader--Metrader 5 that is-- was built to be exchange compliant, and is said to work with futures, I have yet to see a futures broker adopt it or take it seriously.)
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*** Some brokers do offer CFDs through MT4 that are named after and track commonly traded futures products.. BUT these are
NOT futures.
CFDs tend to cost way more than trading the underlying futures products they track, since that's how the broker structures them in order to make a profit from your trade (they have to mark up the cost of trading so they can make a profit when they offset your trade in the underlying market, if they do offset it at all that is...
For instance: You'll sometimes see "S&P500" CFDs being offered by brokers who use MT4, but upon looking closer, you'll notice that the spread you're paying for the CFD version is often twice to three times the cost vs doing the same trade in the futures directly. In this case, the active contract for ES often is just 1 tick in spread (0.25 points on the index,) but the equivalent CFD can be often seen for 0.50 to 0.75 points (2-3 ticks.)
That's not to mention that the cost of financing at rollover is often huge on CFDs when compared to futures.
In short, I do not recommend CFDs in general, since they take an already hard market (most commodities, index, and financial futures) and add additional cost and leverage to the mix...
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So back to the futures part:
You'd want a broker who primarily deals with futures before anything else. Through them, you'd want to use a platform that's designed to work with futures and that meets your technical needs.
Examples of such a broker: https://www.mirusfutures.com/
Examples of such platforms: http://www.ninjatrader.com/ or http://www.multicharts.com/
(Each platform does have a licensing fee for their full versions, but there are versions with slightly limited features that are often offered for free through brokers... or even full versions that are sponsored by the broker. Aside from that, often the broker will have an entry level platform they offer for no cost, if not NinjaTrader or MultiCharts. Mirus Futures has Mirus Trader for instance.)
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Hope I didn't bombard you with too much info at once.
