What keeps MT4 relevant after two decades
MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences years ago, nudging brokers toward MT5. Yet most retail forex traders stayed put. The reason is simple: MT4 has twenty years of muscle memory behind it. Thousands of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts run on MT4. Migrating to MT5 means rebuilding that entire library, and few people don't see the point.
I've tested MT4 and MT5 side by side, and the gap is marginal for most strategies. MT5 has a few extras like more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but the charting feels nearly identical. For most retail strategies, MT4 is more than enough.
Setting up MT4 without the usual headaches
Installation takes a few minutes. What actually causes problems is the setup after install. By default, MT4 shows four charts crammed into one window. Close all of them and open just the markets you follow.
Templates are worth setting up early. Set up your usual indicators on one chart, then save it as a template. From there you can load it onto other charts without redoing the work. Minor detail, but over months it saves hours.
A quick tweak that helps: go to Tools > the original source Options > Charts and tick "Show ask line." MT4 only shows the bid price on the chart, which makes entries appear wrong until you realise the ask price is hidden.
Backtesting on MT4: what the results actually mean
MT4 comes with a backtester that allows you to run Expert Advisors against historical data. That said: the reliability of those results depends entirely on your tick data. Standard history data is not real tick data, meaning gaps between real data points are estimated with made-up prices. If you're testing something more precise than a quick look, download proper historical data.
That quality percentage in the results matters more than the bottom-line PnL. Anything below 90% means the results shouldn't be taken seriously. Traders sometimes share screenshots with 25% modelling quality and wonder why the EA fails in real conditions.
Backtesting is where MT4 earns its reputation, but only if you feed it decent data.
Custom indicators on MT4: worth the effort?
MT4 ships with 30 built-in technical indicators. Few people use more than five or six. That said, the real depth comes from community-made indicators built with MQL4. The MQL5 marketplace alone has over 2,000 options, covering everything from tweaked versions of standard tools to full trading dashboards.
Installing them is straightforward: place the .ex4 or .mq4 file into your MQL4/Indicators folder, restart MT4, and the indicator shows up in the Navigator panel. The catch is reliability. Free indicators are hit-and-miss. A few are genuinely useful. Many haven't been updated since 2015 and will crash your terminal.
When adding third-party indicators, look at the last update date and if users mention bugs. Bad code doesn't only show wrong data — it can slow down the whole terminal.
The MT4 risk controls you're probably not using
You'll find a few native risk management options that the majority of users don't bother with. The most useful is the maximum deviation setting in the trade execution window. This controls how much slippage is acceptable on market orders. Without this configured and the broker can fill you at whatever price comes through.
Stop losses go without saying, but the trailing stop function is overlooked. Right-click an open trade, choose Trailing Stop, and define the pip amount. It adjusts when the trade goes into profit. Not perfect for every strategy, but for trend-following it removes the urge to micromanage the trade.
These settings take a minute to configure and they remove a lot of the emotional decision-making.
Running Expert Advisors: practical expectations
EAs sounds appealing: program your strategy and stop staring at charts. The reality is, most EAs fail to deliver over any meaningful time period. EAs marketed using flawless equity curves are often curve-fitted — they worked on past prices and stop working the moment the market does something different.
None of this means all EAs are a waste of time. A few people develop their own EAs for well-defined entry rules: opening trades at session opens, automating position size calculations, or taking profit at fixed levels. That kind of automation are more reliable because they do repetitive actions that don't require interpretation.
Before running any EA with real money, test on demo first for no less than several weeks in different conditions. Forward testing tells you more than backtesting alone.
Using MT4 outside Windows
The platform was designed for Windows. Running it on Mac deal with friction. Previously was emulation, which mostly worked but introduced rendering issues and stability problems. Some brokers now offer macOS versions built on Crossover or similar wrappers, which are better but remain wrappers at the end of the day.
On mobile, on both iPhone and Android, work well for monitoring positions and tweaking stops. Serious charting work on a 5-inch screen isn't realistic, but closing a trade on the go is worth having.
Check whether your broker offers a native Mac build or just a wrapper — it makes a real difference day to day.