A practical look at MT4 for forex traders
MT4 in 2026: why it refuses to die
MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences years ago, pushing brokers toward MT5. Yet most retail forex traders stayed put. The reason is straightforward: MT4 has twenty years of muscle memory behind it. Thousands of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts only work here are the findings with MT4. Moving to MT5 means porting that entire library, and most traders don't see the point.
After testing MT4 and MT5 side by side, and the differences are marginal for most strategies. MT5 has a few extras like more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but chart functionality is very similar. Unless you need MT5-specific features, MT4 is more than enough.
Getting MT4 configured properly the first time
Installation takes a few minutes. Where people waste time is the setup after install. On first launch, MT4 shows four charts tiled across a single workspace. Close all of them and open just the pairs you follow.
Templates are worth setting up early. Build your preferred indicators on one chart, then save it as a template. From there you can load it onto other charts in two clicks. Small thing, but over months it saves hours.
One setting worth changing: go to Tools > Options > Charts and tick "Show ask line." The default view is the bid price on the chart, which can make entries appear wrong by the spread amount.
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 reliability of those results depends entirely on your tick data. Built-in history data from MetaQuotes is modelled, meaning gaps between real data points are estimated mathematically. For anything beyond a rough sanity check, you need proper historical data.
That quality percentage in the results is more important than the headline profit number. If it's under 90% means the results are probably misleading. Traders sometimes post backtest results with 25% modelling quality and ask why their live results don't match.
The strategy tester is one of MT4's stronger features, but only if you feed it decent data.
Building your own MT4 indicators
MT4 ships with 30 default technical indicators. Few people use more than five or six. But the platform's actual strength lives in user-built indicators built with MQL4. You can find over 2,000 options, ranging from basic modifications to full trading dashboards.
Installing them is straightforward: place the .ex4 or .mq4 file into your MQL4/Indicators folder, restart MT4, and it appears in the Navigator panel. The catch is quality control. Publicly shared indicators are hit-and-miss. A few are solid tools. Some haven't been updated since 2015 and will crash your terminal.
If you're downloading custom indicators, check how recently it was maintained and if other traders report issues. A poorly written indicator won't just give wrong signals — it can slow down your entire platform.
Risk management settings most MT4 traders ignore
There are some risk management features that most traders skip over. First worth mentioning is the maximum deviation setting in the order window. This defines the amount of slippage you'll accept on market orders. Without this configured and you'll get whatever price comes through.
Stop losses are obvious, but MT4's trailing stop feature is worth exploring. Click on an open trade, select Trailing Stop, and define the pip amount. The stop adjusts with price moves into profit. Not perfect for every strategy, but if you're riding trends it takes away the urge to stare at the screen.
You can configure all of this in under five minutes 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 have obvious appeal: set rules, let the code trade, walk away. The reality is, the majority of Expert Advisors fail to deliver over any decent time period. EAs advertised with flawless equity curves are often over-optimised — they performed well on the specific data they were tested on and fall apart when market conditions change.
None of this means all EAs are useless. Certain traders build custom EAs to handle specific, narrow tasks: opening trades at session opens, managing position sizing, or closing trades at fixed levels. These utility-type EAs are more reliable because they execute defined operations that don't require interpretation.
When looking at Expert Advisors, use a demo account for at least several weeks in different conditions. Live demo testing is more informative than backtesting alone.
Using MT4 outside Windows
MT4 is a Windows application at heart. If you're on macOS face compromises. Previously was emulation, which mostly worked but came with display glitches and occasional crashes. A few brokers now offer macOS versions built on Crossover or similar wrappers, which work more smoothly but still aren't built from scratch for Mac.
MT4 mobile, on both iPhone and Android, are genuinely useful for keeping an eye on your account and tweaking stops. Full analysis on a mobile device is pushing it, but managing exits from your phone is worth having.
Check whether your broker offers a native Mac build or just a wrapper — the difference in stability is noticeable.