I’ve been demoing MB Trading for about 2wks now, and till yesterday, I’ve been quite pleased. The problem began when, out of the blue, I began getting “No Connection” errors when trying to adjust my open orders. I found this strange as my MT4 connection status showed good, AND my tick chart was ticking away…and keeping up comparatively with the FXOpen feed. Thinking this was an issue with my system, I tried tracking it down, but never could and lost some pips.
Fast forward to today when I just (literally minutes ago) experienced this same problem. This time, knowing it’s not me as my Dukas and FXOpen feeds and systems were working great, I called MB Trading. I got Ramone on the phone very quickly (for MT support) and explained what was happening.
Ramone responded that they were aware of the issue today and that in fact, on yesterday, they began updates that caused the then and current outage! Okay…so I asked if they provided some type of notification as to when they would be doing systems maintenance and Ramone said they do not…he reported that they do these updates every few weeks fairly consistently and that there was no set time frame or notification to customers. Wow!!! Keep in mind that this is there entire system as their demo feed is the exact same ECN live feed. So this connectivity issue does not just affect demo accounts.
Just seems to me that this is a very poor practice for a seemingly very good, bare bones broker. I’ll keep using the demos since they never expire and the feed is excellent, but I don’t think I’ll do any live trading with MB. Too bad :-(.
Your information is not accurate. MB Trading does Demo updates during the week to both their MT4 and Desktop platforms (Desktop updates affect MT4 as well because the underlying account is really a Desktop account). However, this has no impact on the Live environment, and they never do Live updates during the week. In fact, they have only done two Live updates in the last six months that I am aware of, and both went smoothly over the weekend. The Live environment is a completely different server and IP. The quotes are larger the same, but the Live environment includes Live customer Limit orders in the quotes and the Demo environment includes only DEMO customer Limit orders in the quotes.
Having said that, if you read around on the forums, most people have figured out that the easy way to really test MB (and test live executions as well, which is very important) is to open a live account and trade micro lots. The risk level is minor and you’ll see that the platform doesn’t go down or give you any problems. Their customer support is also outstanding.
Thanks for the correction. Again, only been demoing them for 2wks and my info only reflects what Ramone told me this AM…not personal opinion. BUT, I am glad to hear that this irregularity doesn’t extend to live accounts…HOWEVER, coming from the IT industry, it is proper to give a heads up when doing any type of maintenance that will impact ANY facet of the customer experience…that’s just being professional. A simple email would fulfill this…no technological expertise needed. I do agree that they are very responsive and friendly otherwise. Given this new information on the live feed, I will open a micro AFTER I finish some strategy testing…regardless of risk, I never test new strategies on live accounts.
Thanks again for the corrected info! I love this site!
I actually just spoke to them about something else and they discovered that they had a database issue. All Demo accounts created since 9/1 weren’t working at all due to a perm situation. With some key IT staff out over the Holiday, they didn’t get it fixed until today.
I have been a successful trader for 4 years and love mb and there service is outstanding. If anyone is looking to open up an account and needs any help I have a lot of tools and ebooks on trading. Also any existing mb traders should talk to me
