MetaTrader 5 Platform Updated with Negative Price Capabilities

Following oil prices going negative, the trading platform has been updated to handle such an event.

MetaQuotes, the company that created the industry-standard MetaTrader 4 and 5 trading platforms, announced this Friday that it has rolled out a series of updates to its MT5 platform, including adding negative price capabilities.

As Finance Magnates reported, in April, oil prices went negative for the first time in history, for two days in a row, as the price of May WTI Crude contracts was driven down by lockdown measures, which has significantly reduced the demand for oil.

Because this was a historic event, many brokers were caught unprepared. This, coupled with the fact that many trading platforms didn’t have the capability to support the negative prices, caused some challenges for trading providers.

MetaTrader 5 update in response to oil

However, MetaQuotes said this Friday that it had introduced negative prices into its platform as a direct response to this situation, so the same challenges won’t be present should prices go negative again.

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“The recent drop in oil prices below zero has forced the developers to introduce negative prices in the platform. Support for such prices enables proper platform operation in similar situations,” the company said in its statement today. 

“Furthermore, new columns have been added to the list of open orders and positions (such as operation profitability, market value and magic number), the maximum number of symbols in Market Watch has been increased to 5,000, and the search option has been improved.”

In addition to adding negative price capabilities, the updated version of MetaTrader 5 now includes a new subscription service, allowing traders to subscribe to market data from hundreds of exchanges. 

The MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 platforms were developed by MetaQuotes and have become an industry standard for forex trading. Although MetaTrader 4 remains as the dominant trading platform between the two versions, brokers are increasingly adopting the MT5 platform, which expands demand for the offering and enhances the platform’s features.