MT4 Trading Platform Guide | How to Use MT4 for Forex Trading?

What is MT4 Trading Platform?

MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is universally acknowledged as the world’s most popular forex trading platform, and for good reasons. Its highly customizable and easy-to-use interface makes it apt for your individual trading preferences. With its futuristic charting tools, you can access trading signals, conduct advanced technical analyses, and take the help of expert advisors. With its incredible capabilities, traders with various experience levels can enjoy seamless features and benefits of the MT4 trading platform.

MT4 Trading Platform Guide | How to Use MT4 for Forex Trading?

What are the Key Features of MT4?

Customizing Forex Charts

To open a new forex chart on your MT4 Chart Workspace, right-click on any currency pair in the ‘Market Watch’ window, then select the ‘Chart Window’ option. If you want to zero in on a single currency pair, you can even maximize the chart window displayed on the workspace. Furthermore, regardless of the time period and the currency pair, the MT4 forex trading platform allows you to simultaneously view as many real-time charts as you want to.

Forex charts on MT4 are of four types – bar charts, line charts, tick charts, and candlestick – and you can switch among these anytime you like. In addition, hovering your mouse over a chart will provide you with volume or price information for a specific period. There are plenty of objects that you can draw on your charts, like trendlines, crosshair, Fibonacci retracements, arrows, and text labels, to name a few. 

Adding Indicators

Indicators are technical tools helping you understand market trends and make the right buy-sell decisions. It’s easy to add indicators like Bollinger bands, custom moving averages, momentum, and Relative Strength Index (RSI) to forex charts. 

Simply tap ‘Insert’, and then ‘Indicators’, to select an indicator of your choice from the drop-down menu and add it to a specific price chart. Alternatively, you can click on the ‘Navigator’ window and click on ‘Indicators’, then drag and drop any indicator onto a chart. Doing so will open up a window, allowing you to customize how you want the indicator to be displayed.

Setting Up Price Alerts

From the ‘Terminal’ window on MT4, click on the ‘Alerts’ tab. Once you right-click within this window, tap on the ‘Create’ option from the drop-down menu. An ‘Alert Editor’ window will then appear on the screen where you can set up and modify your price alert to your liking. Setting price alerts will help you stay in sync with the latest market developments, allowing you to make quick and timely decisions.

Using the Crosshair

The crosshair provides information pertaining to the time and date of any point on a price chart, so you can execute your trade analyses faster than usual. It also helps you measure pip, time, and bar distances in a chart, which is particularly useful for determining the take-profit and the stop-loss points. 

You’ll get information somewhat along these lines when using the crosshair: 43/ 537/ 0.68259. This means 43 periods/ 537 points between two prices (53.7 pips)/ price 0.68259. 

Downloading Trade Reports

Open the ‘Terminal’ window on MT4, then go to the ‘Account History’ tab and right-click within the window. From the drop-down menu that appears, click on ‘Save as Report’ or ‘Save as Detailed Report’. Either of these two options will produce an account summary, along with a report describing open trades, closed transactions, working orders, and other aspects of individual trades. 

Examining Your Trade History

To view your past trading records, move to the ‘Account History’ tab again from the ‘Terminal’ window on MT4. 

Then, right-click within the window to select the period for which you want to check your trade history – whether you want to view the records from last month, the last three months, or get the whole picture at once. You can also set a custom date range within which you wish to view the trade history. 

How to Launch the MT4 Trading Platform

You need to download the MT4 platform. Once the download is complete, a pop-up will appear on the screen, asking if you’d wish to run this file.

After you tap the ‘Run’ button, a new dialog box titled ‘MetaTrader 4 Setup’ will pop up. Click ‘Next’ and wait for the solution to get installed on your device, then select ‘Finish’ to automatically launch the program.

In case the program is not launched automatically, you should be able to find a shortcut on your computer; double-click on it to open the MT4 terminal.

Next, choose a trading server and enter your login credentials if you already have a valid trading account. Even if you don’t have one, you can go ahead with a new demo account or a live one. Simply enter your name, email address, deposit, and leverage (1:50 to 1:400), and your account is ready to go!

How to Start Trading with MT4

Trading with MT4 is straightforward once you understand the basics of the MT4 trading system

Opening a position

There are four different ways of opening a new position on the MT4 forex trading platform:

  • Right-click on a price chart, click on the ‘Trading’ option, and select ‘New Order’;
  • Navigate to ‘Tools’ and click on ‘New Order’;
  • Right-click on a currency pair from the ‘Market Watch’ window and tap on the ‘New Order’ option;
  • Press F9 on your keyboard.

Once you’re done, the Order window will pop up on your screen. Here’s a quick manual to help you know your way through the components in this window:

    • Take Profit. Enter the take-profit level you want to lock in using a limit.
    • Stop Loss. If the trade odds are against you, you might want to close the trade by using a stop; so enter your chosen stop-loss level in this field.
  • Symbol. Select the currency pair you’d like to trade, like GBPUSD (Great Britain Pound/US Dollar), for example, or AUDCAD (Australian Dollar/Canadian Dollar). 
  • Type. MT4 lets you make two types of deals: Pending Order and Market Execution. If you want to select the level at which your trade is placed, you can go with a Pending Order. To place your order instantly, Market Execution is the way to go.
  • Comment. You can leave comments about a certain trade for your future reference; these would be included in your trade reports too.
  • Volume. Specifically, this refers to the number of lots you need to select while keeping your risk management strategy in mind.

You can now access the new position in the ‘Terminal’ window, under the ‘Trade’ tab. Next, you’ll need to click either the Buy or the Sell buttons. However, keep in mind that you can place a sell order at the bid or lower price while buying the currency pair would place the order at the Ask or higher price. 

Modifying an order

You have successfully placed an order on the MT4 forex terminal, but you might want to change it in the future for certain reasons. For example, it might occur to you that you haven’t placed your take-profit level correctly. 

Thankfully, the MT4 trading platform allows you enough flexibility in your trading to adapt to unforeseen circumstances or even new market conditions. In order to modify a trade order, select the open order you’d like to change from the ‘Trade’ tab in the ‘Terminal’ window. 

After the order is highlighted, right-click the order and click on the ‘Modify or Delete Order’ option. Then, make the desired adjustments in the Order window and select ‘Modify’ to save the changes you’ve made. 

Pending Orders

When the current price reaches the order level of your choice, you can instruct the MT4 trading platform to open a position; this is what a Pending Order is. You will come across four types of such orders:

  • Buy Limit- It’s an order to set up a Buy position at a price lower than the one when the order is placed, and the price then goes up.
  • Buy Stop- It’s an order to set up a Buy position at a price higher than the one when the order is placed, and the price keeps going up.
  • Sell Limit- It’s an order to set up a Sell position at a price higher than the one when the order is placed, and the price then goes down.
  • Sell Stop- It’s an order to set up a Sell position at a price lower than the one when the order is placed, and the price keeps spiraling down.

The Pending Order window will also include:

  • Expiry- Just in case the market does not touch your desired price level, you can specify a time and date for your trade order to expire.
  • At Price- This is the price level at which you want your Pending Order to set off.
  • Place- As soon as you’re ready to place an order, click this button.

Closing a position

To close an order, double-click the open position you want to close under the ‘Trade’ tab of the ‘Terminal’ window. You will get the same result by right-clicking on the trade listed in the ‘Terminal’ window and tapping on ‘Close Order’. Once you’re presented with the Order window, click on the ‘Close’ bar. 

Want to Learn More?

Now that you know the major features of the MT4 trading platform, it’s time to dive deep into the nitty-gritty of trading. And this is what we have created our trading guides for. Check out our educational resources here.