While all information on the broker guide is kept fresh, the spreads are real-time! All spreads are pulled from each broker’s standard live account (no demos) with mere millisecond of lag (click the icon to refresh). With the built-in sorting feature, you can even sort the brokers by the pair that you trade most!

You can learn more about the administration and design of Brokers in the ‘About Brokers’ box. We hope this new product helps you find the broker that best suits your trading!

Posted by Sidney, Forex Factory Director of Marketing

To set up a custom start date, click ‘Options’ at the top-right of your Trade Explorer, and enter a date in the ‘Custom Start’ section, as shown below.

You may have also noticed that we recently changed the graph setup on the ‘Overview’ tab. Instead of one Flash-based graph, the Trade Explorer now has four image-based graphs on the main tab. This change gives you a thorough overview of the account with just a glance, plus it loads faster because it’s no longer based on Flash technology (which was our initial motivation for changing).

The new graphs also interact with the ‘Performance’ table rows — click the small blue icon on each row to make the graphs represent only that particular period. This is a handy way to zoom in on performance for the year, month, week, or day.

Haven’t tried the Trade Explorer yet? Get started here! Or if you have feedback or ideas for improvement, we’re always glad to hear from you.

Posted by Danny, Trade Explorer Product Manager

As shown above, news stories and calendar events are represented by the familiar factory-shaped impact icons at the bottom of the Market chart. Clicking the icons will bring you to the corresponding news story or calendar event for more detail. Impact icons can be turned on or off from the options below the chart, and only News impacts are turned on by default.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Posted by Michael, Forex Factory Product Developer

The data for Trades is aggregated from members sharing their Trade Explorer information (i.e., permissions set to ‘Public’), and the default settings only show activity from live brokerage accounts (i.e., no demos). Best of all, you can trust that the performance metrics are legitimate! The live/demo distinction cannot be faked on the Trade Explorer, and as we confirmed last month, all trade statistics are based on equity, so open positions are included in the metrics.

While the default settings only show live accounts, Trades is based on our Flex Box technology, so you can customize the content of the Trade Feed and Leaderboard applications.

There’s also a very useful filter on the Trade Feed. You can adjust the setting to show only your buddies’ trades, or only EUR/USD trades, for instance.

The default Leaderboard shows which traders are having the best month, and it can also be configured to display annual or weekly periods. To help keep the rankings pure, only Trade Explorers with equity greater than 100 currency units (dollars/euros/pounds/etc.) are included in the rankings, and commercial members are excluded.

So there you have it — a powerful new tool to assist you in your pursuit of profits!

Please comment or contact us to share your thoughts. We love to hear your feedback!

PS, If you don’t have a Trade Explorer yet, get one here!

Posted by Sidney, Forex Factory Director of Marketing

To open a charted trade, just click the chart icon () for any trade on the Trade List tab (see it in action). You can also option to show other trades on that instrument by checking ‘Show Surrounding Trades.’

Haven’t tried the Trade Explorer yet? Get started here! Or if you have feedback or ideas for improvement, we’re always glad to hear from you.

Posted by Danny, Trade Explorer Product Manager

As Product Manager for the Trade Explorer, I hear from members who are concerned that their Trade Explorer’s statistics are not as favorable as shown on other sites offering trade analytics. Most of the time the discrepancy is due to the trader carrying open losses in their account, which are only being accounted for on their Trade Explorer.

To illustrate this point, I opened a demo account and entered ten random trades. Then I closed the five trades that were winning and left the losing trades open. Here are a few metrics, for the same account, from Trade Explorer and Myfxbook:

Trade Explorer		Myfxbook
(more stats)		(more stats)

The account performance looks a lot better on Myfxbook because their statistics are based on balance, thereby ignoring the huge open loss. Since the Trade Explorer’s statistics are all based on equity, the open loss is reflected throughout all metrics, making the performance appear worse.

It’s not just these top-level statistics that are affected by the choice of equity or balance. Periodic metrics (e.g., How much did I make yesterday? How much did I make last February?) will change dramatically depending on how open trades are accounted for.

Out of the other eight sites we know of offering Forex performance analyzers, half of them are mostly balance-based, three are somewhat equity-based, and only one does a good job of reporting equity throughout. Since the Trade Explorer is one of the two analyzers that is completely equity-based, there’s a good chance your performance will, at times when you have an open loss, look worse on the Trade Explorer than elsewhere.

While this may keep some people from using the Trade Explorer, equity-based statistics are a must for professional traders. And professional traders are who the Trade Explorer was built for! We went to great lengths when developing the product to ensure that it was in line with financial industry standards, and that everything was based on equity.

Btw, we know balanced-based statistics do have their use. They can be helpful in performing what-if scenarios, for example. That’s why the Trade Explorer was built with an ‘Equity/Balance’ toggle that allows you to flip to balance-based statistics when needed.

If you have any questions or feedback, please send us some mail!

Posted by Danny, Trade Explorer Product Manager

Overlay graphs replace the single y-axis with two y-axis scales, one on the left of the graph and one on the right. Both axes can be adjusted with the options below the graph, giving you the flexibility to analyze your trading performance however you want. After some practice with the graph you’ll be able to quickly find answers to questions about your performance, and you’ll begin to understand your strengths and weaknesses from a visual perspective.

Oh, and now you can modify the graph colors too.

Posted by Michael, Forex Factory Product Developer

Speaking of bookmarks, we’ve implemented a number of “permalinks” into the Trade Explorer. Most of the links within your Explorer will now update the browser URL, which can then be bookmarked or sent to a friend. For example, all of the following links work for aediaz1′s Trade Explorer:

- Overview tab: forexfactory.com/aediaz1#22
- Trade Report tab: forexfactory.com/aediaz1#22-report
- Trade Graph tab: forexfactory.com/aediaz1#22-graph
- Trade List tab: forexfactory.com/aediaz1#22-list
- Trade List page 2: forexfactory.com/aediaz1#22-list+pg2
- All expanded: forexfactory.com/aediaz1/22

Please contact us if you find any issues or have a request. I handle all Trade Explorer support, and I can tell you the product wouldn’t be nearly as good without all the feedback from you guys!

Posted by Danny, Trade Explorer Product Manager

fxTrade users: Get your Trade Explorer started here!

While fxTrade-based Explorers look identical to those based on MT4, they connect to trading accounts using different authorization methods. Instead of using an Investor Password, like MT4, OANDA developed a page on the fxTrade interface where traders can grant the Explorer read-only access to their trading history. It’s a secure, modern setup that gives you complete control over access to your trading data. We’re proud to have been chosen to beta-test for OANDA, and we think the final product turned out fantastic.

Please contact us if you have any problems getting your Explorer set up, or if you have any requests. I’m always glad to hear from you guys!

Posted by Danny, Trade Explorer Product Manager

You can utilize four different search types to locate information. For everyday use, the ‘Google Powered’ search harnesses Google’s algorithm to find relevant content throughout Forex Factory. For Forum-specific searches, the custom-built ‘Forum Posts’ search is a powerful tool when used with the ‘Advanced Options.’ There’s also a News-specific search, and a ‘Posts by Member’ search that makes it easy to sort through posts a member has made.

The ‘Posts by Member’ search pulls together member-specific content from around the site, and it ushers in new nomenclature. The word ‘post’ now encompasses four items: forum threads started, forum thread replies, news stories submitted, and news story comments. This puts all of a member’s contributions into a single, easily-browsed list. Of course you can still search specific post types by clicking on the ‘Post Type’ links or setting the advanced options.

We hope this new search engine helps you find what you’re looking for! If you run into any bugs, or have feedback, please let us know.

Posted by Scot, Forex Factory Senior Developer