“I’ve been using MotiveWave for over a year and have developed numerous custom studies and strategies for the platform. Here’s my honest take:
The Good
1. Excellent Charting Tools – MotiveWave’s charting is top-tier, with smooth rendering, flexible layouts, and robust drawing tools.
2. Order Flow & Volume Imprint Built In – No need for costly third-party add-ons; MotiveWave includes strong native capabilities for order flow and volume analysis.
3. Solid Selection of Common Indicators – Covers most of the widely used studies right out of the box.
4. Broad Broker & Data Feed Support – Works with multiple brokers and data feeds, making it easy to adapt to different markets.
5. Cross-Platform – Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, which is a big plus if you’re not a Windows-only trader.
The Bad
1. Custom Studies Require Java Knowledge – If you don’t understand object-oriented programming, development will be a steep climb.
2. Poor SDK Documentation – While powerful, the SDK is under-documented, which slows development.
3. Excessive Boilerplate Code – Even simple indicators or backtests require large amounts of code.
4. Weak Automated Trading Out of the Box – There’s no native, robust automation; trading via alerts is clunky and unreliable.
My Experience
I’ve developed many custom studies and strategies in MotiveWave, but the barrier to entry is high for non-programmers. If you want custom tools and don’t code Java, you’ll likely need to hire a developer.
The platform itself is stable and works as expected for charting and discretionary analysis. However, my attempts with the only available third-party automated trading study were disappointing as it relied on an “alerts on steroids” approach and often missed trade entries and exits.
Because of these limitations, I now use MotiveWave primarily as a charting and analysis platform, while running my actual automated trading through Python with brokers that offer a Python API.
Bottom Line:
MotiveWave is an excellent charting platform with strong built-in order flow tools and multi-broker support. If you just need charting and analysis, it’s great. If you want serious automation or strategy development without coding, you may want to look elsewhere or be prepared to invest time and money into custom development.”
“AMP Futures and MotiveWave have consistently delivered excellent service and performance. They have become my go-to choice for both software and brokerage needs. The platform is reliable, intuitive, and meets all of my trading requirements.
On the rare occasion I encountered an issue, the staff handled it promptly, politely, and with genuine professionalism. Their friendly and helpful approach made the experience seamless and reinforced my confidence in their service.
I highly recommend AMP Futures and MotiveWave to anyone seeking a dependable, well-supported trading platform and brokerage.”
“software from the medieval times!!!!
very oldschool in any dimension, developer centered, zero user experience, GUI oldschool,
severe bugs in order execution
severe bugs in configuration, lots of supportmailing is necessary to make it run! Even the support cant help fixing some issues, they are playing stupid, dont read my bug description properly, they tell me "do it this way..." but did it exactly the same way.
I sent them the log files and videos but they cant reproduce the error. End of message.
No sorry, not saying its in the baglog, will be fixed with the next update in 2 weeks for example! So the bug doesnt exist for them!!! Theres no escalation to the management level possible!!!
I guess, they know pretty well about all the bugs - but they have been instructed by the management to play stupid. Toxic management. The bosses just see motivewave as a cash cow :(
very few updates per year, no release pan, support in summer 2024: a major update to a new version will come in 2024. Even in march 2025 it didnt come
futures contract rolling has several ways to - one is via right click in the chart. Doesnt work. Step by step documentation of the bug (screenshot, text), hind that in TradingView it just takes a few clicks. Support: right click on the chart, click roll to next contract - also just a few clicks! One of plenty examples where they ignore what I have written.
To configure motivewave takes weeks! It is related to the underlying you have chosen. You want another underlying. Do it all again manually. Even when you set it as default, template! Import of a saved template doesn’t work properly.
The rollover to the next futures contract - you have to configure it all again manually!
It can happen, that all of a sudden, without having changed anyhting, the configuration changes for days!!! No rollback possible, indicators are missing. next day all is fine.
Chart zooming - the proportions of footprint ladder (zoom in extremely, than you can see the numbers, but then you just see a part of the footprint, you have no overview/ can’t see the candle five minutes ago, don’t have an overview), candle, ... are just awful! You dont get such a nice (over)view like tradingview offers. There are worlds between them.
The support told me, that I’d need level 2 data feed. But that’s wrong! Level 1 data for footprints are fine, too and way more cheaper!!!
Another example that has cost me a lot of money is how to switch from paper trading to live trading. As an user you can’t come to the solution on your own. Finally you click a checkbox, the description next to it is worded so vaguely, implicitly. No window is popping up, telling you that you’re now in live trading mode, nothing! At another place you can tell motivewave to use the paper account for your trades. That is overruled by the checkbox, mentioned above!!
Other trading softwares make it better: e.g. the first action after starting the app is to choose live trading, simulation trading, replay mode whatever. And they show in the chart window which modus you are running
And this is just a small excerpt from the challenges of motivewave!
Im now lucky with tradingview and bookmap”
“I honestly love MotiveWave. It has the ability to have multiple layered studies on top of each other. Lots of ways for trade execution from using the chart, DOM, buttons, etc. Different order types from OCO, Limit, Market, STOP Limit, etc. They have the ability to look at data at a second to millisecond level for a bookmap like interface. That could be improved from a UI uplift perspective. It could have more features with their Order Book and DOM in general. As an example, with the orderbook being able to highlight large orders. Overall, great product in general, not the greatest in one area but sufficient in all areas.”
“I have been using it for a while and am very happy. I am sure that I only use 1/10 of its capabilities. When I have an issue, Motivewave gets back to me quickly, and I have never had an issue that they didn't take care of. I have only had to contact them twice.”
“It works really well on every operating system, with a couple of caveats: in macOS the ram usage is huge sometimes, in Linux a line needs to be added to fix the mouse wheel zoom
Overall really happy to work with the software”
