MT4 after twenty years: an honest take on the platform

Why traders still pick MT4 over newer platforms

MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences some time ago, nudging brokers toward MT5. Still, most retail forex traders haven't moved. The reason is not complicated: MT4 does one thing well. A huge library of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts were built for MT4. Migrating to MT5 means rebuilding that entire library, and few people can't justify the effort.

I've tested MT4 and MT5 side by side, and the differences are less dramatic than the marketing suggests. MT5 has a few extras like more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but the charting feels very similar. Unless you need MT5-specific features, MT4 still holds its own.

MT4 setup: what the manual doesn't tell you

Downloading and installing MT4 is the easy part. Where people waste time is configuration. By default, MT4 opens with four charts tiled across a single workspace. Close all of them and start fresh with the instruments you actually trade.

Templates are worth setting up early. Set up your usual indicators on one chart, then right-click and save as template. After that you can load it onto other charts in two clicks. Sounds trivial, but over time it saves hours.

One setting worth changing: go to Tools > Options > Charts and enable "Show ask line." The default view is the bid price by default, which makes your entries look off until you realise the ask price is hidden.

MT4 strategy tester: honest expectations

MT4 comes with a backtester that gives you the ability to run Expert Advisors against historical data. Worth noting though: the quality of those results comes down to your tick data. Standard history data from MetaQuotes is interpolated, meaning the tester fills gaps using algorithms. For anything beyond a rough sanity check, grab real tick data from a provider like Dukascopy.

That quality percentage in the results tells you more than the headline profit number. If it's under 90% suggests the results are probably misleading. Traders sometimes show off backtests with 25% modelling quality and ask why their live results don't match.

Backtesting is where MT4 earns its reputation, but it's only as good as the data you give it.

Building your own MT4 indicators

MT4 ships with 30 standard technical indicators. Most traders never touch them all. But the real depth is in custom indicators coded in MQL4. There are over 2,000 options, spanning basic modifications to elaborate signal panels.

The install process is painless: drop the .ex4 or .mq4 file into the MQL4/Indicators folder, reboot MT4, and the indicator shows up in the Navigator panel. The catch is quality. Publicly shared indicators range from excellent to broken. Some are well coded and maintained. Others are abandoned projects and may crash your terminal.

If you're downloading custom indicators, verify when it was last updated and if other traders report issues. Bad code doesn't only show wrong data — it can lag the whole terminal.

Managing risk properly inside MT4

MT4 has some risk management options that a lot of people never configure. First worth mentioning is maximum deviation in the new order panel. This defines the amount of slippage is acceptable on market orders. If you don't set it and you're accepting whatever price the broker gives you.

Everyone knows about stop losses, but the trailing stop function are underused. Click on an open trade, select Trailing Stop, and define the pip amount. It moves with price moves into profit. Doesn't work well in choppy markets, but if you're riding trends it removes the temptation to stare at the screen.

None of this is complicated to set up and they remove a lot of the emotional decision-making.

Running Expert Advisors: practical expectations

Expert Advisors on MT4 sounds appealing: set rules, let the code trade, walk away. In practice, a huge percentage of them underperform over any meaningful time period. The ones sold with incredible historical results are often fitted to past data — they performed well on historical data and break down once the market does something different.

This isn't to find out more say all EAs are useless. Some traders code custom EAs for one particular setup: entering at a specific time, automating position size calculations, or exiting positions at fixed levels. These smaller, focused scripts tend to work because they handle mechanical tasks without needing discretion.

Before running any EA with real money, run them on a demo account for no less than two to three months. Running it forward in real time is more informative than backtesting alone.

MT4 on Mac and mobile: what actually works

MT4 was built for Windows. Mac users deal with compromises. The old method was emulation, which mostly worked but came with rendering issues and the odd crash. A few brokers now offer Mac-specific builds built on Crossover or similar wrappers, which is an improvement but remain wrappers at the end of the day.

On mobile, on both iOS and Android, are genuinely useful for monitoring positions and tweaking stops. Full analysis on a mobile device is pushing it, but closing a trade on the go is genuinely handy.

It's worth confirming if your broker provides a native Mac build or just a wrapper — the difference in stability is noticeable.