Would it be OK to ask in this forum for advice on which trading platform to use? I’m not particularly impressed with the one I’m using, and would like to know what members use and recommend
mt4 . That’s the most widely used platform
Trade interceptor is pretty good as well. It’s complimented by a great app for android and iOS
Trade interceptors is amazing on the iPhone, it lets you see charts and do some technical analysis on the move.
MT4 is the most widely used platform, there must be a reason. Is it good and you can do your own programming to add strategies in, if you know how to. Very user friendly.
Some brokers also have good platforms, I like FXCM’s platform, it works for me. Play around with some and see what you like and dislike.
FXCM Trading Station 2 is best for me. It’s easy to use than MT4 IMO.
imho, i think fxcm’s platform is more user-friendly and also more pleasing to the eyes
Thanks for ur input
Thanx. Seems to be a popular choice
Thanx. Trying FXCM next
this platform is most useful in my knowledge…
Hi Dreamraker,
Welcome to the forum 
If you have any questions regarding our trading platforms, feel free to ask me in the Broker Aid Station.
Jason
dear jason what is the difference between fxcm and fxcmmena ,? both using same platform and trading station or not ,? please give reply ,because i have to clear my confusion :32:
Hi Sagrifa,
FXCM MENA is our affiliate operating out of Beirut and is regulated by the Central Bank of Lebanon. They provide service to traders in the Middle East and North Africa in Arabic, French and English. Clients of FXCM MENA have access to the same FXCM platforms and trade execution, but with local support and local funding options. This link has more info on FXCM MENA.
Jason
I am very much impressed with vertexfx technical chart, so i use this software for technical analysis
Where Robots Are Born
According to the statistics, over 60 per cent of all transactions in financial markets are carried out using the trading robots, and only 30 to 35 percent are carried out manually. Indeed, it doesn’t surprise anyone as the trading robots allow traders not to spend hours in front of their monitors trying to guess the currencies movement but use this time for more pleasant activities. Besides, the use of trading robots diminishes psychological pressure on the trader as well as the risk of deviating from accepted trading rules under the emotional influence is minimized, as the trading robots cannot be stressed and act strictly according to the built-in algorithm.
Now that we know basic evident advantages of the use of the robots (or advisers) we will try to understand where one can get them.
It goes without saying that the main source of the trading robots is the web, specifically, e-shops, among which we would like to accentuate… the platforms MT4 and MT5. You will say that these platforms, which are the most popular in the world, are meant for a different thing - to be able to open and close positions, not for shopping, and you will be wrong. Open a trading terminal on your computer, it doesn’t matter MT4 or MT5, find the “Market” bookmark in the bottom of the page, click on it, and you will see hundreds and thousands advisers, indicators, scripts, books and magazines on Forex, which you can buy straight away, not leaving from your monitor.
This is not a usual shop, it is a real hypermarket, created by the company MetaQuotes Software Corp. - the same company that developed the platforms MT4 and MT5 themselves, and this is a sure guarantee of the product quality! “Market” is one of the most reliable sources of advisers, as along with your purchase you receive a detailed description of each robot, its work monitoring results (often in real time mode), you can learn what other traders think about this robot and its author, and, which is significant, you can test it absolutely free of charge and assess its efficiency.
Apart from above, the MT4 and MT5 platforms provide another unique advantage to the trader - you can rent it, not buy, either for a month or a year or six months. And the most economy variant is to get a robot for free by opening the “Library” bookmark (Code Base) of your personal trading terminal.
If you are an experienced trader and you have your own trading strategy, you can, rather than search for somebody else’s adviser, create your own robot and put it on sale. Even if you do not know the programming languages MetaQuotes Language 4 and 5 (MQL4 and MQL5), this is not a problem - you can place an order, and in just few days you will have your own adviser created by experienced programmers according to your algorithm.
As mentioned above, apart from hundreds and thousands robots, the fore mentioned bookmarks will help you find a great number of indicators and scripts as well as specialised books and magazines - that is, everything that should and could make your forex trading more comfortable and profitable. Just a few numbers to confirm these words - by the mid last year over 6.300 products had been sold in the “Market” costing in total over $522.000, and the service had been used by 520 sellers and 24.500 buyers.
Winding up this short review, we should mention one more great opportunity provided by the MT4 and MT5 platforms - the immediate access to one of the world largest trading signals copying services (bookmark “Signals”), where you can set up a subscription for very reasonable money (average cost about $20 per month), after which all the transactions of more experienced colleagues whom you like will be copied in your trading account in fully automatic mode. You will not even have to turn on your computer as with the help of the terminal you may also use the service of virtual hosting (similar to VPS-service, but better).
So, download the MT4 or MT5 terminals to your computer, press F1 on your keyboard and visit the MetaQuotes company, read, investigate, buy, sell, leave your comments on our forum. And if you make another useful discovery, do not forget to share it with your colleagues, we will only be grateful to you.
FIVE SPRING OBSERVATIONS
Or How To Avoid Mistakes Subscribing to Signals in MT4 & MT5
One can be sure that those who read this article now know very well (and if not, will learn learn soon) the advantages of social trading which makes it possible to automatically copy to your account the transactions of many more successful traders. It is especially convenient as it is very easy to use the service - it is built directly in the MT4 and MT5 trading terminals.
Those who prefer to sell itself, may not even suspect that the tab “Signals” at the bottom of the terminal opens instant access to one of the world’s largest social trading services. Though whom out of dozens of thousands signal providers to choose in order to have profit and not to lose your money is the main question.
This and further publications will try to identify specific mistakes of the subscribers and tell the readers how to avoid them in the future.Meanwhile we will share just five observations that the recent spring has brought.
To help the subscribers, the company MetaQuotes (the developer of the MT4 and MT5 platforms and the creator of the service “Signals”) offers to us its own rating of the best and most reliable signals. Besides, visiting the mql5.com portal, signals may be ranked as far as their popularity among subscribers and other parameters are concerned.
And now, if you will, leaving behind the introductory part, let’s move on to the observations which we announced above.
Observation №1 is that very often MetaQuotes ratings and those of the subscribers …are not the same, and it is primarily due to the fact that the desire to obtain the greatest possible profit in the shortest possible time constantly prevails over subscribers. This, naturally, leads to a sharp increase in the chance of losing your entire deposit.
We do not in any way claim that the MetaQuotes rating is ideal, but at least it lacks such a factor as human greed and has dozens parameters adding to an objective assessment of the signal quality.
Observation №2, the results of which will not surprise anyone but which definitely confirm the fact that the higher the profit, the the greater the drawdown. For signals with a monthly increase of capital of 15-25% the drawdown usually ranges between 15 to 40 percent of the deposit. Further, with increasing returns, the drawdown begins to confidently steal up to 100%, and what happens when such falls happen - there is no need to explain.
Observation №3. The service created by MetaQuotes allows to rank the signals according to their life span as well. Yere the statistics vividly show that the signals with profitability of 100, 300 and more per cent a month do not usually live longer that 30 weeks. Those of them that have survived without the “plum” for more than 20 weeks are - alas! - on the tops of preferences of not only subscribers, but also in the forefront of other ratings. If you filter the signals according to their life span, you will see that the signals living for a year or more, on average, bring to investors not more than 5-10 percent per month. (Which, by the way, when compared with the interest on bank deposits, is not so bad. Or rather, is very good).
And now two more observations which for sure will be of use to the “Signals” service users and to which we definitely would like to draw your attention.
Observation №4 is the difference between the graphs of the balance of the account and the funds. This is probably the most important and the most obvious indicator of what you can expect from a subscription. And if the balance is steadily going up, and the funds remain somewhere at the bottom, or frequently jumping up and down, it clearly demonstrates the riskiness of a subscription to the signal.
Observation №5 is the currency pairs on which the signal provider makes his transactions and their spreads. When studying very decent signals it may suddenly turn out that some providers, apart from major currencies, work with quite exotic pairs as well, such as CAD/JPY or NZD/CHF. For example, Chinese traders like to deal with pairs with Yuan which are not present in the arsenal of many brokers at all, and even if they are, the spreads on them may be really astronomic.
Five is a quite round figure so in order not to bore the readers, let’s stop here for the time being. Here these five observations are listed in short, but in the nearest future we will try to parse them with specific examples and give tips that we hope will allow the traders to avoid associated pitfalls.
Besides, we will share observations 6,7,… and maybe even 9 and 10 with you. And you will share observations №11, 12 and …20 with us.
What is the goal? It is very “simple”- to jointly create a system that will allow everyone to subscribe only to the signals that can indeed bring us real profits with the least risks. Probably this is what the term “Social Trading” means.
Do Traders Die for Metal?
Four Simple Criteria to Select Profitable Signals.
Probably the most famous line from Gounod’s “Faust” is the one that sounds in the aria of Mephistopheles “People dying for metal”. In the previous publication, having shared some of observations on subscriptions to trading signals via the platform MT4 and MT5 (remember? Tab “Signals” at the bottom of the terminal), I suggested that subscribers often choose signals solely on their profitability, forgetting completely about the risks.
And then? Remember what Mephistopheles sang about?
To be fair, everything is not so tragic. First, selecting a signal for yourself, you can focus not only on the rating of popularity among subscribers, but also on the rating that the portal mql5.com offers. This rating is based on more than three dozen indicators, although the formula for its calculation is made secret by its creators and is hidden behind seven locks, which naturally causes dissatisfaction of certain sceptics, who do not want to trust someone’s word, and are willing to find out all the detail on their own.
Well, let them do whatever they want - all the three dozen parameters of each signal separately are available to anyone on line. If you wish, you can work out your own formula or just study, analyse and subscribe.
Personally, I do not load myself with all these numbers and I am guided by only 4 parameters:
- Deposit growth, in per cent (here, I don’t think I need to explain anything - the higher the percentage, the better)
- Maximum drawdown, again in percentage of the deposit (here everything is clear as well - the smaller the better)
- Lifetime of the signal,
- And stability of its work.
The lifetime is a very important parameter. If one ranks the signals presented by the mql5 presented as far as this parameter is concerned, it is clearly seen that the longer the signal lives, the less the average monthly income is. Thus, for signals with the lifetime of over 100 weeks, this figure is usually in the range from minus 10% to plus 10%. Of course, there are exceptions, but most often this is what happens.
On the other hand, it is possible to distinguish another group of signals, which shows phenomenal profits of hundreds or thousands per cent, the peak of life for which occurs in the 20th - the 40th week, and then again … you can listen to the aria of Mephistopheles.
In order to prevent this, I suggest using the fourth of the proposed criteria, which I call stability. If someone likes more sonorous terms, you can call it a dispersion of returns, the essence will not change. And the essence is to make it clear for us what was the reason for the profit - just luck or a high-quality, well thought-out trading strategy.
Just one obvious example (in order not to be accused of any advertising or anti-advertising, the specific names of the signals will not be given). So:
At the time of this writing, the growth of the deposit for signal X was 2400 per cent, and that is just in 20 weeks! That is quite impressive. The drawdown at such yield does not inspire any fear either - it is only about 15 per cent only. But if you look at the monthly rate of return, here you will see the following picture: in January - plus 1,176 per cent, in February - plus 85 per cent, in March - plus 21 per cent, in April - minus 7 per cent, in May - minus 6 per cent.
I can’t say for others, but I would not expect here a stable income - a deviation from the mathematical expectation in both directions in this case may be about 400 per cent, and it is virtually impossible to calculate the efficiency of such an investment.
For comparison, let us look at another signal. The lifetime is almost the same - 21 weeks, the maximum drawdown, as well as for the previous signal is 14 per cent, but the increase in the deposit is 10 times lower - 115 per cent “only”. At the same time the monthly yield is as follows: January - plus 9 per cent, February - plus 15 per cent, March - plus 22 per cent, April - plus 20 per cent, May - plus 15 per cent. I think it can be seen without any further calculations that the subscriber can continue to count on the profits in the range of 10 to 20 per cent both in June and later on.
Some of us prefer risk and adrenaline, others prefer calm and stability. I’m not lazy and have made some simple calculations, using the mql5 statistics. It turned out that out of more than 7,000 subscribers who use this service, about two thirds can be attributed to the category of incorrigible optimists greedy for profit. And it is only one-third of subscribers who have carefully analysed the words of the aria of Mephistopheles.
In any case, good luck to both.
[B]Make Your Own "GRAIL"
Section "Freelance» in MQL5.community - any whim for your money![/B]
What is required:
- an indicator of levels of wave formations
- to complement an advisor for scalping in the stock markets,
- to collect statistics on currency pairs,
- to write an advisor for testing of graphical objects,
- to improve the indicator for the analysis of Japanese candles …
These and thousands of other various tasks are given by traders to programmers in the “Freelance” section of the MQL5.community portal. (One can get to it either directly on the Internet address, or through a variety of services built into the terminal MT4 and MT5).
“Freelance” is a section worthy of separate consideration, since (as, indeed, other sections of the portal as well) it is a very useful resource for those who seek to automate their trading on Forex.
We will not go into the debate, what is better: to trade manually or automatically. We will just mention that the algo trading frees the trader from having to sit at the computer all days long, and also relieves the process of trading of such a harmful factor as human emotions. Whatever passions in the market, the adviser (or robot, whatever you like) will strictly follow the algorithm incorporated in it, 24 hours a day, 5 days a week.
Moreover, the algorithm inherent in an advisor can be tested in a few minutes. If the algorithm has not left the confines of the brain, one can wait for the test results forever.
Generally, in our case, the algorithm - is the keyword, which determines whether the algo trading will bring profits or losses.
Of course, you can not spare yourself of unnecessary problems and take advantage of (free or for money) a ready advisor, which is very easy - just press the tab “Market” at the bottom of the terminal MT4 and MT5, and you will encounter “many kilometres of shelves” filled with a wide range of products . But, when the brain is swelling from creative ideas, it is much more interesting to put them into practice by creating your own unique advisor - the “Holy Grail”, which will bring to you (and only you!) fame, wealth and prosperity.
There is only one problem: you are a trader, not a programmer and you do not know the language MQL5, which is used for all programs for MT4 / MT5. Here help from the section “freelance” comes around.
Of course, there are lots of ads on the Internet by programmers who are ready for a reasonable price (and sometimes not very reasonable, meant for “dummies”) to perform a job for you. But the advantage and fundamental difference of the “Freelance”, is the fact that it is a labor exchange for programmers who are ready to fight for the right to execute your order.
It’s like an auction: You place (absolutely for free!) an application with a description of what you want to get (see examples at the beginning) and denote the price you are willing to pay for this work. For example: "Needed a break-adviser on fractals for futures trading. The budget - no more than $30. " You can also specify the desired date for executing the work, for example, 3 days.
Then everything happens like when fishing - you throw a baited hook and watch whom of programmers you will get. Analysis of the statistics shows that the average of bites is from 15 to 25. At the same time, programmers may simply agree to your terms, or put forward their own. Moreover, they can be either better or worse than the primary terms - for example, not $ 30, but 20 or 50 and the deadline - not 3 days, but a week … As evidenced by all the same statistics, the fastest of all jobs was executed … in 1 minute!
Of course, such fast food is rather an exception, but the portal allows you to select a programmer not in blind, but having learnt his detailed “creative biography” - what work he has already done previously, at what price, in what time and what responses he received from customers.
And if we really do statistics, it should be said that most of the applications is performed, depending on the complexity, at the price from $15 to $100 in up to 5 days.
In conclusion, let me share another personal observation.
There is a common opinion that programmers are not engaged in forex trading, and they only embody the specific programs that traders tell them. My experience fully agrees with this. For an experiment, I placed an application in the “Freelance”, according to which an Expert Advisor for opening “locks” was required. In two days I received about 30 offers from experts who were ready to undertake the work on my algorithm. After recognizing that there is no algorithm and I was prepared to pay for its development separately, the number of offers sharply reduced to … zero.
The conclusion is the same: any trader, before ordering the work in “freelance” should clearly phrase not only what he wants to get in the long run, but also how it should be achieved. And the more competently and in detail all possible actions and situations will be considered in the algorithm, the more likely you are going to end up with exactly the adviser you wanted to receive.
And finally a few figures that are more likely to be of interest to programmers who know the language MQL5. A programmer who actively works in the "freelance"has performed an average of 500 to 1,000 orders at an average cost of about $ 50 each, earning thus from $25,000 to $50,000.
Should I go on? Or is everything clear?
Notes of a Stingy Trader
Many will definitely remember how Alice fell through the rabbit hole and found herself in a new world, full of new and hitherto unknown possibilities.
Talking about the possibilities of the MT4 and MT5 platforms, these platforms possess a whole host of such holes: one just has to look at the bookmarks at the bottom of the terminal. One of them is called ‘Market’, which perfectly reflects its function, since it leads to a shopping centre, in which the shelves are full of hundreds of products, all of which are very useful for those calling themselves “traders”.
To be more precise, the on line store on the mql5.com portal currently offers more than 5000 products, amongst which there are more than 700 indicators, 400 robot-advisers, scripts and other programs, as well as dozens of specialized books and journals on various financial topics.
The official opening of the MetaTrader Market occurred in the start of 2012 and by the middle of last year more than 6300 ‘products’ had already been sold on that market, with their cumulative value exceeding half a million dollars. The amount of sellers offering products on this market is approaching one thousand, whilst the number of buyers has already far exceeded 25000. In my opinion, these rather commanding figures make obvious that this hypermarket possesses truthfully useful and essential tools for any trader.
To be honest, I am not a big fan of paying money for anything, and prefer downloading various advisers free from the internet. On the other hand, I would like to stress that not even one – not one! - of my free advisers has delivered me so much as a penny of profit. Moreover, having seen two or three deposits go down the drain I realized that it is time to put a stop on experiments with my own wallet, and decided to take an introductory tour of the MetaQuotes ‘Market’.
Why did I like it?
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Because it is quite easy to sort products by categories. For example, ‘MT4-advisers- popular, new, free, paid’ (notice, the market also offers free advisers!). Having gone through this chain of filters you can easily find what interests you personally.
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Because there is a substantial amount of information on every product, which is not limited just to ‘sample’ fragments of statements or authors’ descriptions, but includes also full data on online-monitoring and comments from traders who have either already purchased or simply tested a given adviser or indicator. Such information is vastly more objective than promotional texts, which aim simply to praise the product of the seller.
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Because prior to purchasing an advisor or an indicator you can test them absolutely for free. This also provides us with two numbers that enable us to evaluate the quality of a given product: the count of how many demo-versions have been downloaded as opposed to how many actual purchases have been made (activations). Let’s assume, for example, that 1000 demo-versions have been downloaded, after which 1000 actual purchases have been made we can safely say that the given product has satisfied the needs of traders by 100%, both in terms of quality and in terms of price. If, on the other hand there have been 0 purchases then one should definitely decide against acquiring this adviser or indicator.
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As has already been mentioned, I am quite stingy (or greedy) and dislike throwing around my money. For this reason “Market” has become quite attractive to me since one can, instead of purchasing, can… rent the products offered for a month, half a year or a year. Rent-test-like-buy. Do not like-forget: the loss is not big at all!
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One more relatively minor, but extremely pleasant feature is the ability to dispel myths. Amongst traders there exists a legend that if you buy an adviser priced at 10, 20 or 30 thousand dollars it will definitely end up being the ‘Holy Grail’ that will grant you multiple millions. Here it is apt to remember Alice and the Wonderland in which she found herself in at one point in her life. So that you do not find your mind wondering off to Wonderland and that it stays, instead, in reality ‘Market’ allows you to satisfy your curiosity by testing advisers priced at tens of thousands of dollars absolutely for free. I am not going to berate them, nor am I going to praise them. Simply test them and decide for yourself on whether they are worth your money or not.
Finally, allow me to poor a couple of spoons of tar into this barrel of honey (what can we do without them!)
Spoon #1: The average purchase price on “Market” is around 85 USD. This is, of course, not several hundred or even several thousand, but it is still a hefty sum. Therefore, prior to completing a purchase I strongly recommend making use of all the services ‘Market’ offers for the evaluation of a product’s quality.
Now, Spoon #2: As claim the makers of this service, the key concept in ‘Market’ is Activation. In other words, buying a product, you are not buying a product (with apologies for the mediocre rhyme) but instead you are (quote): “acquiring the right to use it an unlimited number of times, but on a limited number of computers (devices?). One activation means that you can use a product on one computer without any constraints. You will be unable to download a copy of the product onto another computer, and manually copying the file onto another machine will similarly result in it not opening.”
What can one say? I think that those who are familiar with the term ‘copyist’ can now give a sly smile. Especially since those ‘copyists’ can also be purchased on ‘Market’ without any problems whatsoever.
Believe me: I am not calling anyone to do anything. I am merely trying to compare the arguments ‘for’ and the arguments ‘against’ from the perspective of a stingy trader. The truth, as per usual, lies somewhere in the middle, and when we find it we certainly be able to save (and possibly earn) quite a large amount of money.
VIRTUAL “ME”
OR HOW I TAMED FOREX
I have been working with Forex for around seven years. I do not remember exactly when this virus infected me, but I surrendered to it quickly and, as it seems, for eternity. Nothing could help cure this illness: neither lost deposits, or a shattered nervous system, or sleepless nights, or fights with my wife. (By the way, if anyone could propose their own treatment options, my spouse would be very grateful).
As for myself, having understood that the disease cannot be beaten, I decided that… I would not take full control of it, as the ancients suggested, but at the very least I would saddle it and tame it slightly.
Therefore, the first thing I did was completely refuse to trade “by hand” and fully immerse myself into the world of advisers. Naturally, there were relapses, but these became rarer and rarer. Moreover, sound logic was on my side: since progress has given me a weapon as powerful as the computer, I convinced myself that it would be foolish not to use it.
As a result, I had much more free time and started sleeping at night, while the amount of money lost began to sharply decrease – this had a most positive impact on the atmosphere in my family.
I studied other people’s advisers, wrote my own algorithms, tested robot after robot… and kept on feeling that something was missing.
And here came the “eureka” moment. When, just five minutes before the life-changing speech of the chairman of Fed, there was a blackout in my area and my computer only came back to life once the markets had already gone through all possible scenarios, it hit me that I needed to seriously upgrade my workplace… and so I bought a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supplies).
My happiness knew no bounds. However, after half a month, some workers on the street broke the phone cord and I was left stranded without internet.
Soon after I bought a mobile modem, the subject of my pride – my UPS, so heavy, imposing and seemingly infinitely reliable – passed away.
My next purchase was a laptop, onto which I loaded all my advisers and which was working 24/7.
It seemed as if life was getting better, but at some point, unfortunately (or fortunately?), I developed an interest in social trading, that is subscribing to someone else’s trading signals. I immediately realised what ping, delay and slippage are, seeing my wallet go thin – the deposit of the signaller grew steadily, but mine, in the best-case scenario, remained at zero.
The solution turned out to be surprisingly simple and efficient…
I forgot to mention that within social trading, having tried many different services, I finally settled on the mql5.com portal. First and foremost, the thing that caught my eye is that this service belongs to a “brand”, since it is owned by MetaQuotes – the company that developed the platforms MT4 and MT5. Secondly, I could not find such a variety of signals and such detailed information on each of them elsewhere. There was another advantage – mql5 did not tie itself to any single broker, and you could subscribe to signals (or, on the contrary, sell them) while having accounts in even a hundred different broker companies.
So, the solution was found behind the door with the sign “Virtual Hosting”. I think that everyone already knows what VPS is or how to store information in the “cloud” (whoever doesn’t, please check out Wikipedia), and so all I shall say is that virtual hosting from MetaQuotes is the same thing as a normal VPS, but better. It is better because it was developed specifically for MetaTrader and it is not just easy, but very easy to use – a few clicks of the mouse in the settings of your personal terminal on MT4 or MT5 and all your advisers, indicators, scripts and subscriptions to signals along with all your settings will be transferred to the virtual server. From this moment onwards you are provided with uninterrupted trading 24/7. You can now sleep peacefully – blackouts and internet problems will no longer reflect on your deals.
Add to this the minimal delay in the transmission of signals, because you can choose to rent the MetaQuotes server closest to the trading server of your broker.
I will not go into details about how to use virtual hosting (there are detailed instructions regarding this on the mql5 portal, and a whole series of videos on YouTube), and will just add a few words about something that, I believe, should interest every true trader – money. More precisely, the cost of renting a MetaQuotes virtual server. Today, this is only $10 per month (or, with a discount, $100 per year), which is much lower than the cost of renting a normal VPS.
There is a saying – “trust, but verify”. You can check everything I have mentioned absolutely free of charge: you do not pay for the first 24 hours of rent.