What keeps MT4 relevant after two decades
MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences some time ago, 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 visit here scripts run on MT4. Switching to MT5 means rebuilding that entire library, and few people would rather keep trading than recoding.
After 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 core charting feels very similar. Unless you need MT5-specific features, 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 the setup after install. On first launch, MT4 opens with four charts crammed into the screen. Clear the lot and open just the markets you follow.
Templates are worth setting up early. Set up your preferred indicators once, then save it as a template. After that you can load it onto other charts without redoing the work. Small thing, but over months it makes a difference.
A quick tweak that helps: go to Tools > Options > Charts and check "Show ask line." MT4 only shows the bid price by default, which can make buy entries seem misaligned by the spread amount.
MT4 strategy tester: honest expectations
MT4 comes with a backtester that allows you to run Expert Advisors against historical data. But here's the thing: the quality of those results comes down to 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 beyond a rough sanity check, grab proper historical data.
The "modelling quality" percentage tells you more than the profit figure. Anything below 90% means the results aren't trustworthy. Traders sometimes share screenshots with 25% modelling quality and ask why their live results don't match.
Backtesting is where MT4 earns its reputation, but the output is only useful with quality tick data.
Custom indicators on MT4: worth the effort?
MT4 comes with 30 standard technical indicators. Most traders never touch them all. That said, where MT4 gets interesting is in user-built indicators written in MQL4. You can find a massive library, covering everything from simple moving average variations to complex multi-timeframe dashboards.
Installing them is straightforward: copy the .ex4 or .mq4 file into the MQL4/Indicators folder, refresh MT4, and the indicator shows up in the Navigator panel. The catch is quality. Publicly shared indicators are hit-and-miss. A few are genuinely useful. Many are abandoned projects and can freeze your terminal.
If you're downloading custom indicators, check when it was last updated and whether users mention bugs. A poorly written indicator doesn't only show wrong data — it can slow down MT4.
The MT4 risk controls you're probably not using
There are a few native risk management features that most traders skip over. First worth mentioning is the maximum deviation setting in the trade execution window. It sets the amount of slippage you're willing to tolerate on market orders. If you don't set it and you're accepting whatever price comes through.
Stop losses are obvious, but MT4's trailing stop feature are overlooked. Right-click an open trade, choose Trailing Stop, and enter your preferred distance. The stop moves automatically as price moves your way. It won't suit every approach, but on trending pairs it removes the temptation to stare at the screen.
These settings take a minute to configure and they take some of the guesswork out of trade management.
EAs on MT4: what to realistically expect
Automated trading through Expert Advisors have obvious appeal: set rules, let the code trade, walk away. The reality is, most EAs lose money over any extended time period. The ones marketed using flawless equity curves are usually curve-fitted — they worked on the specific data they were tested on and stop working once market conditions change.
None of this means all EAs are useless. Some traders develop their own EAs for well-defined entry rules: entering at a specific time, managing position sizing, or taking profit at set levels. These smaller, focused scripts are more reliable because they do defined operations where you don't need judgment.
Before running any EA with real money, test on demo first for no less than two to three months. Forward testing is more informative than any backtest.
MT4 beyond the desktop
The platform was designed for Windows. Running it on Mac deal with compromises. The traditional approach was emulation, which mostly worked but introduced rendering issues and stability problems. A few brokers now offer macOS versions built on compatibility layers, which are better but still aren't true native apps.
On mobile, available for both iOS and Android, are genuinely useful for watching positions and tweaking stops. Doing proper analysis on a mobile device isn't realistic, but adjusting a stop loss on the go is genuinely handy.
Look into whether your broker has a native Mac build or just a wrapper — the difference in stability is noticeable.