What forex traders should actually know about MetaTrader 4

Why traders still pick MT4 over newer platforms

MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences a while back, steering brokers toward MT5. But most retail forex traders stayed put. The reason is simple: MT4 has twenty years of muscle memory behind it. More than a website decade's worth of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts only work with MT4. Switching to MT5 means porting that entire library, and the majority of users can't justify the effort.

I spent time testing MT4 and MT5 side by side, and the differences are less dramatic than the marketing suggests. MT5 adds a few extras including more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but the charting feels nearly identical. For most retail strategies, MT4 still holds its own.

Getting MT4 configured properly the first time

Downloading and installing MT4 is the easy part. The part that trips people up is getting everything configured correctly. On first launch, MT4 opens with four charts crammed into one window. Close all of them and open just the markets you actually trade.

Save yourself repeating the same setup by using templates. Configure your usual indicators once, then right-click and save as template. After that you can apply it to any new chart in two clicks. Sounds trivial, but over weeks it makes a difference.

A quick tweak that helps: open Tools > Options > Charts and tick "Show ask line." The default view is the bid price by default, which makes buy entries seem misaligned by the spread amount.

Backtesting on MT4: what the results actually mean

The strategy tester in MT4 allows you to run Expert Advisors against historical data. But here's the thing: the reliability of those results depends entirely on your tick data. The default history data from MetaQuotes is modelled, meaning the tester fills gaps with made-up prices. If you're testing something that needs accuracy, you need proper historical data.

The "modelling quality" percentage is more important than the bottom-line PnL. If it's under 90% suggests the results shouldn't be taken seriously. Traders sometimes post backtest results with 25% modelling quality and ask why the EA fails in real conditions.

This is one area where MT4 genuinely outperforms most web-based platforms, but only if you feed it decent data.

Building your own MT4 indicators

MT4 comes with 30 built-in technical indicators. Most traders never touch them all. But the platform's actual strength comes from custom indicators built with MQL4. The MQL5 marketplace alone has a massive library, ranging from tweaked versions of standard tools to full trading dashboards.

Adding a custom indicator is simple: drop the .ex4 or .mq4 file into the MQL4/Indicators folder, reboot MT4, and it appears in the Navigator panel. One thing to watch is reliability. Free indicators range from excellent to broken. Some are solid tools. Some haven't been updated since 2015 and may crash your terminal.

If you're downloading custom indicators, look at when it was last updated and if people in the forums have flagged problems. A broken indicator doesn't only show wrong data — it can lag the whole terminal.

The MT4 risk controls you're probably not using

There are a few native risk management options that the majority of users never configure. First worth mentioning is maximum deviation in the new order panel. This controls the amount of slippage is acceptable on market orders. Without this configured and you're accepting whatever price is available.

Stop losses are obvious, but the trailing stop function are worth exploring. Right-click an open trade, pick Trailing Stop, and define your preferred distance. It moves with price moves your way. Not perfect for every strategy, but on trending pairs it reduces the need to micromanage the trade.

You can configure all of this in under five minutes and they remove a lot of the emotional decision-making.

Expert Advisors — before you trust a robot with your money

Expert Advisors on MT4 sounds appealing: set rules, let the code trade, walk away. The reality is, a huge percentage of them fail to deliver over any decent time period. EAs marketed using flawless equity curves are often curve-fitted — they performed well on historical data and fall apart the moment the market does something different.

None of this means all EAs are worthless. Some traders code their own EAs for one particular setup: entering at a specific time, calculating lot sizes, or taking profit at fixed levels. That kind of automation work because they handle mechanical tasks that don't require discretion.

When looking at Expert Advisors, run them on a demo account for no less than two to three months. Forward testing tells you more than any backtest.

MT4 beyond the desktop

MT4 was built for Windows. Mac users face friction. Previously was running it through Wine, which did the job but had display glitches and occasional crashes. Certain brokers now offer native Mac apps using Crossover or similar wrappers, which is an improvement but still aren't built from scratch for Mac.

The mobile apps, on both iPhone and Android, are genuinely useful for monitoring positions and tweaking stops. Serious charting work on a phone screen isn't realistic, but adjusting a stop loss while away from your desk is worth having.

Check whether your broker offers real Mac support or a compatibility layer — the experience varies a lot between the two.