What keeps MT4 relevant after two decades
MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences a while back, steering brokers toward MT5. Still, most retail forex traders stayed put. The reason is the full report straightforward: MT4 has twenty years of muscle memory behind it. More than a decade's worth of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts only work with MT4. Migrating to MT5 means rewriting that entire library, and few people would rather keep trading than recoding.
I've tested MT4 and MT5 side by side, and the differences are marginal for most strategies. MT5 adds a few extras including more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but the charting feels very similar. For most retail strategies, MT4 is more than enough.
MT4 setup: what the manual doesn't tell you
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. Clear the lot and open just the markets you care about.
Save yourself repeating the same setup by using templates. Build your preferred indicators once, then right-click and save as template. After that you can load it onto other charts without redoing the work. Small thing, but over time it saves hours.
One setting worth changing: open Tools > Options > Charts and tick "Show ask line." MT4 only shows the bid price by default, which can make your entries look off until you realise the ask price is hidden.
Backtesting on MT4: what the results actually mean
The strategy tester in MT4 lets you run Expert Advisors against historical data. But here's the thing: the quality of those results comes down to your tick data. Built-in history data is not real tick data, meaning gaps between real data points are estimated mathematically. If you're testing something that needs accuracy, download third-party tick data.
The "modelling quality" percentage is more important than the profit figure. If it's under 90% suggests the results shouldn't be taken seriously. I've seen people post backtest results with 25% modelling quality and wonder why their live results don't match.
Backtesting is where MT4 earns its reputation, but only if you feed it decent data.
MT4 indicators beyond the defaults
MT4 comes with 30 standard technical indicators. Most traders never touch them all. But the platform's actual strength comes from community-made indicators written in MQL4. There are over 2,000 options, ranging from simple moving average variations to complex multi-timeframe dashboards.
Adding a custom indicator is simple: place the .ex4 or .mq4 file into the MQL4/Indicators folder, refresh MT4, and you'll find it in the Navigator panel. The catch is quality control. Publicly shared indicators are hit-and-miss. A few are genuinely useful. Some haven't been updated since 2015 and will crash your terminal.
If you're downloading custom indicators, look at how recently it was maintained and whether other traders report issues. Bad code won't just give wrong signals — it can slow down your entire platform.
Managing risk properly inside MT4
There are a few native risk management tools that a lot of people don't bother with. The most useful is the maximum deviation setting in the trade execution window. This defines how much slippage is acceptable on market orders. Without this configured and you'll get whatever price is available.
Everyone knows about stop losses, but the trailing stop function is underused. Right-click an open trade, choose Trailing Stop, and enter a distance. The stop adjusts with the trade goes your way. Doesn't work well in choppy markets, but for trend-following it takes away the temptation to micromanage the trade.
None of this is complicated to set up and the difference in discipline is noticeable over time.
Expert Advisors — before you trust a robot with your money
Automated trading through Expert Advisors sounds appealing: set rules, let the code trade, walk away. In reality, the majority of Expert Advisors fail to deliver over any extended time period. Those advertised with flawless equity curves are often fitted to past data — they worked on past prices and fall apart when the market does something different.
That doesn't mean all EAs are a waste of time. A few people build personal EAs for specific, narrow tasks: time-based entries, calculating lot sizes, or closing trades at predetermined levels. These smaller, focused scripts work because they execute mechanical tasks without needing discretion.
When looking at Expert Advisors, test on demo first for no less than two to three months. Running it forward in real time reveals more than backtesting alone.
Using MT4 outside Windows
MT4 is a Windows application at heart. Mac users face compromises. The old method was running it through Wine, which did the job but had display glitches and occasional crashes. A few brokers now offer Mac-specific builds using compatibility layers, which is an improvement but remain wrappers at the end of the day.
On mobile, available for both Apple and Android devices, are surprisingly capable for keeping an eye on positions and making quick adjustments. Doing proper analysis on a phone screen isn't realistic, but adjusting a stop loss from your phone is genuinely handy.
Look into whether your broker has a native Mac build or just a wrapper — the experience varies a lot between the two.