MetaTrader 4 at IC Markets: the New York Clock Behind a Pakistani Screen
Your terminal shows Karachi time; your account is stamped by a machine in New York. That gap decides when the day rolls over, when margin rises, and when the overnight charge lands.
Open IC Markets Account →MetaTrader 4 is installed from the brand platform pages or the app stores and from nowhere else: this is an independent affiliate site and it hosts no installer and no APK. What it can do is spell out the one thing the terminal never states plainly for a Pakistani trader - whose clock it is running on. IC Markets keeps its MetaTrader servers in the Equinix NY4 data centre in New York, which sits on UTC-4 through the American summer and UTC-5 through the winter, while Pakistan Standard Time is a flat UTC+5 with no daylight saving at all.
The arithmetic that falls out of that
Nine hours apart in the American summer, ten in the winter. The New York cash session therefore opens near 17:00 PKT and closes near 02:00 PKT under US daylight time, and an hour later at both ends once the clocks go back. Server midnight - the moment the platform stamps a new trading day and charges the Swap Free holding fee against every open lot - falls somewhere near 09:00 to 10:00 PKT if your terminal clock is set to the server zone. That is mid-morning here, not midnight. The Higher Margin Requirement window, which runs from thirty minutes before the daily close until fifteen minutes after the next open, lands in the small hours of a Pakistani night, roughly between 01:30 and 02:15 PKT.
What reaches you from the broker, and what does not
The account number, its trading password and the exact server string all come out of the Secure Client Portal, never from a review page. The brand publishes where the servers physically sit but not the server strings themselves, so any page quoting one is guessing. CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money.
MetaTrader 4 (MT4) at IC Markets
- Raw Spread and Standard both carry the Swap Free option, and the branch the brand registration feed opens for Pakistan is marked eligible for it
- The server sits in Equinix NY4 in New York while PKT is a fixed UTC+5, so the gap is nine hours through the American summer and ten through the winter - and it moves because New York changes its clocks, never because Pakistan does
- Swap Free trades interest for a flat per-lot charge set symbol by symbol - USD 11 on EURUSD, USD 26 on GBPCHF, USD 62 on gold - which makes the account free of swap, not free of cost
- Stop out bites at 50% on every account type, measured against equity in the base currency rather than in rupees
New York or London: which server should stamp your day?
| Platform | Pricing model | Best for | Devices |
|---|---|---|---|
| MetaTrader 4 / MetaTrader 5 | USD 3.50 a side on Raw Spread, so USD 7.00 for the round turn on a lot; Standard buries the same cost in a spread from 0.8 pips and charges USD 0 commission | Anyone who needs the full 2,250-symbol list, the New York rollover clock or the Swap Free option | Desktop, web and mobile builds, published per device by the brand itself |
| cTrader | USD 3.00 per USD 100,000 per side | Traders who want the cTrader interface and its copy tools, and can work with 121 symbols instead of 2,250 | Desktop, web, iOS and Android, answering to a London server four to five hours behind PKT instead of a New York one nine to ten hours behind |
| TradingView | Priced exactly as cTrader Raw Spread, on the same London side | Traders already charting in TradingView who want that same London-side pricing without a second terminal | Browser |
Two questions settle this for a trader in Pakistan: how many symbols you need, and which city stamps your rollover. MetaTrader answers to New York and quotes 2,250 instruments; cTrader answers to London and quotes 121.
Getting the terminal onto the machine
Download MetaTrader 4 (MT4) from your Secure Client Portal area after you open an account, or try it first on a free demo.
Open IC Markets Account →Where the file comes from, and what we could not verify
Type the address rather than following a forwarded link or a paid search result. The published platform range covers MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, MetaTrader WebTrader, cTrader on desktop, web, iOS and Android, TradingView, the IC mobile app, IC Social, Signal Start and ZuluTrade, read on 2 September 2026; the address bar should show ic.com or secure.ic.com, and a live check on that date still saw icmarkets.com redirecting to ic.com. Two things this page deliberately does not carry: a direct file link and a build number, neither of which is published anywhere we could check.
Three values the terminal will never guess for you
Save the installer instead of running it from the browser, then look at the publisher name Windows shows on the file before opening it. First login asks for three values and will guess none of them: the account number, the trading password that belongs to that number, and the server string, which has to match the confirmation character for character. The brand states where the machines are - Equinix NY4, New York, for MetaTrader - but never publishes the strings, so no third-party page can supply them for you.
Demo and live are different accounts on different servers even when both sit in one terminal, so moving between them means signing in again with the other credential set rather than changing a setting.
A Pakistani day laid over a New York server
Work the offset out once and the day stops surprising you. New York runs UTC-4 in summer and UTC-5 in winter; PKT never leaves UTC+5. London, where the cTrader servers live, is UTC+1 or UTC+0, so it is only four to five hours behind you while New York is nine to ten.
What that means hour by hour
The London session opens around 12:00 PKT in the British summer and 13:00 PKT in winter. New York joins near 17:00 or 18:00 PKT, and the overlap of the two - historically the busiest stretch of the currency day - runs through the Pakistani evening. The American close falls at 02:00 or 03:00 PKT, meaning the daily Higher Margin Requirement window and the weekend one both open while Pakistan is asleep, and a position sized comfortably at 22:00 PKT can be sitting against a raised margin requirement four hours later without anyone touching it.
Read the terminal, not the rule of thumb
Because the offset shifts twice a year on the American side and never on the Pakistani one, no fixed table stays right for a whole year. The terminal shows its own server clock in the Market Watch panel; that clock, not this page and not your phone, is what decides which calendar day a trade and its overnight holding fee are recorded against.
MT4 specifics worth checking before install
| Feature | MetaTrader 4 at IC Markets |
|---|---|
| Markets | Forex and CFDs |
| Charting | 30+ indicators, 9 timeframes |
| Execution | One-click trading, no dealing desk |
| Devices | Windows, Mac, WebTrader, iOS, Android |
| Server | Equinix NY4, New York |
| Swap Free | Available on Raw Spread and Standard, 90+ instruments |
Account facts sitting behind the terminal
| Detail | IC Markets |
|---|---|
| Minimum deposit | USD 0 on all three main accounts, though the balance itself is kept in one of ten base currencies and PKR is not one |
| Maximum leverage | 1:5000 reaches the first 25 lots on MetaTrader and then steps down; cTrader is held at 1:1000 throughout |
| Tradable instruments | 2,250+ through MetaTrader against 121 through cTrader, of which 90+ carry a published Swap Free holding fee |
| Account types | Raw Spread, cTrader Raw Spread and Standard, each offered with a Swap Free variant |
| Platforms | MetaTrader 4 and 5 out of New York, cTrader and TradingView out of London |
| Execution | No dealing desk; pricing passed through from institutional liquidity providers |
| Support | Round the clock, seven days, in English: no Urdu line and no Pakistan office are advertised |
| Pakistan-specific licence | None. Pakistan operates no retail forex or CFD regime at all, and SBP EPD Circular Letter No. 08 of 2022 directs banks to identify and block payments to offshore CFD platforms |
Read from the brand pages on 2 September 2026 and worth re-reading before you act on them. Leverage means a high risk of losing money.
What each account charges you per lot
| Account | Spread from | Commission | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raw Spread | 0.0 pips | USD 3.50 per side | Raw MetaTrader pricing at USD 7.00 round turn per lot, Swap Free available, nothing required to open |
| cTrader Raw Spread | 0.0 pips | USD 3.00 per USD 100,000 | The London side, 121 symbols, Swap Free available, nothing required to open |
| Standard | ~0.8 pips | USD 0 | No commission line at all, the cost sitting inside the spread, Swap Free available |
Terms move: check them inside the portal first. Leverage carries a high risk of losing money.