From time to time it’s good to put the code away and change the environment – what I have recently decided to do. And I installed Dealbook 360. Why Dealbook? Because I heard a lot of positive comments about it and because I was hoping that it will inspire me to invent new solutions and addons for MT4 (and by the way it did ;) ).
This review will be a small feature comparison of a Dealbook and MetaTrader 4.
Initial problems
It all started with… problems. It appears that Dealbook won’t run under Vista/Windows Server 2008 if we have Data Execution Prevention mechanism activated. Fortunately, you only need to add an exception for Dealbook in advanced system settings and everything will start to work properly.
First impressions
At first the default DB layout strikes with lots of windows, some of them are blinking, arrows are changing, different sounds can be heard all the time :D
What I advise to do is to close all the windows and discover their functions one by one.
There is a lot to discover
Dealbook astounded me with the number of configuration options – there is nothing that you can’t configure! Almost every window has its own configuration panel, which allows to set everything that is important and more. Almost every window can be scaled and moved, rolled up and down, we can create several layouts, which can be easily and quickly loaded any time.
I invite you to have a look at a few interesting things that we can find in Dealbook.
Workspace
Made in an interesting fashion – the authors didn’t use standard system window bar styles, what saves a lot of space. Everything is as compact as it can be, we can roll up every window to bar, what may be useful and what is missing in MT4.
It can be seen that the authors of DB have put a lot of thought into ergonomy – screen space is used to the maximum by the DB.
A nice feature is an ability to undock any window – it becomes an ordinary independent window, which can be dragged outside the DB360 workspace – e.g. into a second screen. Undocked windows are visible after minimizing DB, what can be sometimes useful (more in a toolkit description below).
Quote table
More advanced than in MT4 – apart from the symbol, time or ask and bid prices, we can display profit fields for each currency (both in pips and account currency), percent and pip changes, max/min prices, max/min prices from last 52 weeks, average prices, open prices, close prices, volumes (for CFD) and a few more things.
The table is also very ergonomic – we can open a chart window or an order window from it using just two clicks.
Chart module
Very functional. We are able to choose chart type (candles, lines, ohlc, heiken ashi, kagi, KK, three line break) and timeframe (ticks, M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M10, …), to configure grids, to overlay another symbol on the chart (to show correlations), and of course to choose indicators and analytical tools (it’s a lot to choose from: retracements, expansions, a few DiNapoli tools, Gartley tool, Gann tool, cycles tool, hand-written notes and more).
We can manage all orders from the chart – send orders from the menu or edit them in an easy way using drag-and-drop – what I do in MT4 using in DB360 is built-in!
To sum up, the chart is extremely user-friendly and what I want to say once again – it has great configuration abilities.
I must confess that I “copied” a few ideas from DB360 and I am currently implementing them on MT4 – so I invite you to click the big green button of RSS channel subsription so you won’t miss the new things I am preparing.
Toolkit
This is what is missing in MT4 – big buttons for sending market orders on each instrument. What is more, as I said at the beginning of this text, DB360 allows to undock them from workspace so we can minimize DB main window and keep the quote buttons on the screen – happens to be very useful.
Sounds
DB360 is full of sounds – for almost every standard action there is a default sound associated with it – in MT4 I have to use my own code for that :D
Order management
This one is debatable. In spite of interesting features like one-cancels-another pairs or entering market by using trailing orders, the TP and SL execution in DB360 is very strange compared to MT4.
As we know – every platform has its own philosophy, but here MT4 is much better, especially for a short interval play, because we are able to edit TP and SL of an order very quickly. In DB this is done by the main order and an OCA pair associated with it – maybe I just got used to MT4, but entering SL value and accepting it seems more intuitive for me.
Of course, we have to say about DB’s ability of editing orders from the main chart, which was mentioned earlier.
I also like the possibility of opening seperate windows with open, pending and historical orders.
Abstracts of the accounts
This is the part I like the least :]
I understand that it is a result of platform specifics, but finding out how to check todays change on your account will take you at least a few minutes when you do it for the first time.
Dealbook Web
Apart from Dealbook 360 you have access to Dealbook Web, which is an interface for the browser.
I must admit that it works just fine and in case you don’t have access to the “full” version, it may be a satisfying substitute.
The interface is easy and clear. Unfortunately, it has very limited configuration options – e.g. Saxo Web trader has advantage here, beacuse its web interface can be configured more. Anyway, DB Web is worth seeing, beacuse it is really nice.
Mobile version
There is also a mobile version, but I haven’t tested it because of the lack of time.
Conclusions
All in all, I like DB360, mainly because of its configuration options and built-in features. It has a few things lacking in MetaTrader, but for me MT4 gives more programming abilities, what means that I can write anything that is missing.
I invite everyone to see and test Dealbook, because I think it’s worth to see other platforms just because they may inspire us in some way.
For now, I’m planning to send a few notes to MT4 authors about what can be added to MT4. But so far I decided to copy a few ideas from DB360 to MT4 so I encourage you to click the big green RSS channel subscription button so as not to miss these addons :)
