Interview with Spotware (Developer of cTrader)

[Enivid]

Two years after publishing my interview with Ilya Holeu, who was the Head of Sales and Marketing at Spotware Systems at that time, I present an interview with James Glyde, the company’s current Business Development Manager. Spotware is the creator of cTrader platform, which can serve as an attractive alternative to MetaTrader.
Two years ago, I spoke with Ilya Holeu who was the head of sales of Spotware at that time. What would you call your biggest success since then? And what was your biggest failure?

Our biggest success has to be our record breaking volumes this summer of 2015 where June was our first peak to then be beaten by each month following by between 7 & 10 %, and is now a consistent pattern. Additionally the number of active live accounts has grown an average of 21.7% each quarter so far for this year.
Our biggest failure in my opinion is that our mobile apps are not up to the same incomparable standard as the rest of our products. We understood the market needed feature rich mobile trading apps. By over burdening them with unique features we compromised responsiveness and recovery time from the background. Just to be clear trading connection and execution has never been affected. We have dedicated a lot of resources and currently have the biggest ever team working over and above on improving user experience and bringing our iOS and Android applications up to the same standards as cTrader for Web and Desktop and we feel we are imminently close to completing our goal.

You have recently launched a number of new features in cTrader/cAlgo (like custom alerts, movable charts, more informative panels, etc.) Were they all voted for as the most-wanted upgrades or did you implement some of them just because the company believed that they are needed?

The ones which you have listed were voted for and requested by thousands of traders! Our feedback[at]spotware.com address inbox was riddled with those demands as was our www.vote.spotware.com site. This is why we are so pleased to deliver these welcome features. The other features which we added; for example the New Symbol Tree, Symbol Status and Popular Markets were introduced to enhance a trader’s experience when navigating a multi-asset class trading platform which is packed with thousands of equities from dozens of countries and hundreds of exchanges.
Additionally we have added lots of new options inside our cBroker platform allowing brokers to completely customize their Symbol Tree, change symbol descriptions, add search tags to make it easier for traders to find the symbols they want to trade with and promote popular markets.

The adoption of the cTrader platform among the FX brokers seems to have decreased compared to the last year. Why do you think this is the case and how do you plan to deal with it?

This year we have proven to be a very popular choice for startups. They are in a position to choose from any platform they want and completely unrestricted by existing internal or external pressures diverting their attention. This means the decision making and onboarding process is much quicker.
When you previously spoke with Ilya Holeu there was a number of brokers rushing to get their hands on the platform suite before their competition could, for those brokers that did, it has really paid off for them. We work very closely with all of our broker clients to deliver the best trading experience to all traders.
We have a number of big names in the pipeline, currently integrating the cTrader Suite, but for well-established brokers this process can take much longer due to a variety of factors from their side.

Do you perform your own due diligence to make sure you are supplying the platform to an honest and financially stable company? After all, if the broker turns out to be a scam or if it fails, it may taint the platform’s reputation.

While we do not have a fixed policy in place, we are vigilant and have in fact refused to provide services in some cases. Additionally we reserve the right to discontinue services if we believe our services are being used for deception. We require all brokers to provide a trading enabled FIX API, for them to have acquired one due diligence will have already been carried out on that company by the Liquidity Provider.
Realistically, if a scam broker is looking to steal deposits, why pay for a trading platform when the intention is not to provide trading services. If a broker is looking to manipulate trading conditions then they won’t even come close to our platform, it won’t let them do what they want.

You offer iOS, Android and web version of the platform. Any plans to offer a native Mac (OSX) app or anything for Linux systems?

It is something we are researching, and as you can imagine it is not a small task. While we do get requests we have not received the same demand as we have for other features, understandably we don’t want to take on such a task without any guarantees, but we are ready to handle it.
cTrader Web is available for traders not using Windows operating System and in fact boasts a few extra features, including more Charts (six in total), more Chart Objects (Fibonacci Arc & Fibonacci Time Zone) and the ability to apply the same indicator across multiple time periods. The only real disadvantage is cTrader Web doesn’t support custom indicators and cBots. The remaining core benefits are fully accessible from Safari, FireFox and Chrome.

You have recently launched a nice new feature of custom margin call and price alerts in cTrader. It appears to be applicable only when email settings are configured and the user is logged into cTrader ID. Why are you so restrictive about it?

An integral part of these features is the email notifications which are sent to inform traders of important events. Without verifying the email address we could be sending sensitive account information to the wrong address, plus many traders could miss out on this great service. The primary purpose of using email login is complying with best practice standards.
Having a cTrader ID brings many benefits to traders since it allows them to save chart templates, workspaces, link multiple accounts under a single ID, access to cMirror and external third party services like Myfxbook using our open API. We plan to increase the services that are available to traders using a cTrader ID.

You already support trading in CFD symbols. Do you now have any plans to launch futures or options support? Adding binary options support, for example, seems like a trend in Forex trading platforms nowadays.

Of course we are considering introducing new investment types, but there is a lot to consider, for example how doing so will affect our existing position and how we could compete with well-established platforms which have been offering options and futures for as many years as we have been FX, Metals and Oil. CFDs on equities was a natural progression for us, our robust and fully scalable technology positioned us well for becoming the best Multi Asset-Class CFD trading platform for both traders and brokers.
Binary Options is indeed a trending service that many brokers are providing and currently has a lot of attention. A lot of research should be conducted as to how we can introduce the same transparency as we provide through cTrader to Binary Options. Binary Options is not a difficult task, especially in contrast to cTrader, cMirror and cAlgo. For now we believe those resources will be better invested in other features and services to further compliment cTrader.

And what is your first priority for the platform’s development at the moment?

As already mentioned, our current focus is on our mobile trading platforms. Other than this; we will very soon be introducing hundreds of symbols into our Spotware demo versions of cTrader and cAlgo to showcase the platform as the go to Multi-Asset-Class CFD trading platform, to ultimately prove our point to both traders and brokers. What we will be offering is something that neither brokers nor traders will be able to ignore.

The set of functions to work with Chart Objects in cTrader and cAlgo looks to be quite small compared to the one in MetaTrader. Do you have any plans to expand it?

The main factor is the usability of those objects, cTrader’s objects are far easier to place, manipulate and remove. To customize objects you can just click on it to bring up the options to customize line type, width and color without having to select from a menu. We of course intend to bring new objects but while we lack only a few, we feel that our selection doesn’t act a handicap to our traders.

You have nice tick charts. Any plans to implement the built-in support for point-and-figure and Renko charts? I am sure many traders would appreciate such a feature.

Yes, we have seen a demand for both chart types and they are on our to do list, along with dozens more features! Additionally we have plans to increase the increments of tick charts available and add many new order types throughout 2016.

Do you use the platform yourself? What is your own favorite feature? What is your best tip to traders using cTrader?

Of course I do! If I’m honest, I traded with cTrader a lot more before I worked at Spotware. Now I am always in demo accounts putting together screenshots for our designers in preparation for our weekly newsletters to brokers and for other promotional purposes. My favorite features are the entire chart trading elements and how responsive they are, my personal preference is seeing and being able to configure your orders and protections on top of the chart, it adds more perspective than just seeing numbers in a window.
Additionally, cMirror is fantastic! I have seen some incredible strategies here and I can guarantee that if I wasn’t affiliated with Spotware, this would be my go to Spotware product! My tip is to check our cMirror whether you are an Investor or want to become a Strategy Provider.

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