A practical look at MT4 for forex traders
Why traders still pick MT4 over newer platforms
MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences a while back, nudging brokers toward MT5. Yet most retail forex traders kept using MT4. The reason is straightforward: MT4 has twenty years of muscle memory behind it. Thousands of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts were built for MT4. Switching to MT5 means rewriting that entire library, and the majority of users would rather keep trading than recoding.
After testing MT4 and MT5 side by side, and the gap is smaller than you'd expect. MT5 adds a few extras including more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but the charting is about the same. If you're weighing up the two, there's no compelling reason to switch.
Getting MT4 configured properly the first time
The install process is quick. Where people waste time is the setup after install. Out of the box, MT4 shows four charts tiled across the screen. Close all of them and start fresh with the markets you care about.
Templates are worth setting up early. Set up your go-to indicators once, then right-click and save as template. Then you can load it onto other charts without redoing the work. Small thing, but over time it saves hours.
Something most people miss: go to Tools > Options > Charts and enable "Show ask line." The default view is the bid price by default, which can make entries appear wrong until you realise the ask price is hidden.
How reliable is MT4 backtesting?
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 gaps between real data points are estimated mathematically. If you're testing something that needs accuracy, download third-party tick data.
That quality percentage in the results matters more than the bottom-line PnL. If it's under 90% indicates the results aren't trustworthy. Traders sometimes share screenshots with 25% modelling quality and can't figure out why the EA fails in real conditions.
Backtesting is where MT4 earns its reputation, but the output is only useful with quality tick data.
MT4 indicators beyond the defaults
MT4 comes with 30 standard technical indicators. Most traders never touch them all. However the platform's actual strength is in community-made indicators written in MQL4. The MQL5 marketplace alone has thousands available, covering everything from simple moving average variations to complex multi-timeframe dashboards.
Installing them is straightforward: place the .ex4 or .mq4 file into the MQL4/Indicators folder, restart MT4, and it appears in the Navigator panel. One thing to watch is quality. Community indicators are hit-and-miss. A few are genuinely useful. Many are abandoned projects and may crash your terminal.
Before installing anything, check how recently it was maintained and if other traders mention bugs. A poorly written indicator won't just give wrong signals — it can lag your entire platform.
Managing risk properly inside MT4
MT4 has a few native risk management tools that a lot of people skip over. First worth mentioning is the maximum deviation setting in the order window. It sets how much slippage you'll accept on market orders. If you don't set it and the broker can fill you at whatever price is available.
Stop losses are obvious, but trailing stops are underused. Click on an open trade, select Trailing Stop, and enter your preferred distance. The stop moves when price moves into profit. Not perfect for every strategy, but for trend-following it takes away the temptation to micromanage the trade.
None of this is complicated to set up and they take some of the guesswork out of trade management.
Expert Advisors — before you trust a robot with your money
Automated trading through Expert Advisors attract traders for obvious reasons: set rules, let the code trade, walk away. The reality is, most EAs lose money over any meaningful time period. Those marketed using flawless equity curves tend to be curve-fitted — they performed well on the specific data they were tested on and fall apart once market conditions change.
That doesn't mean all EAs are useless. Some traders build personal EAs to handle one particular setup: entering at a specific time, calculating lot sizes, or taking profit at fixed levels. That kind of automation tend to work because they execute defined operations without needing discretion.
Before running any EA with real money, run them on a demo account for no less than several weeks in different conditions. Live demo testing reveals more than backtesting alone.
MT4 on Mac and mobile: what actually works
The platform was designed for Windows. If you're on macOS has always been a workaround. The traditional approach was running it through Wine, which was functional but came with rendering issues and occasional crashes. A few brokers now offer macOS versions using compatibility layers, which work more smoothly but remain wrappers at the end of the day.
On mobile, on both Apple and Android devices, are genuinely useful for watching open trades and tweaking stops. Serious charting work on a phone screen isn't realistic, mt4 broker but managing exits from your phone is genuinely handy.
Look into whether your broker has a native Mac build or just a wrapper — the difference in stability is noticeable.