MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is by far the most prominent trading software for forex and CFD brokers. As such, someone who wants to learn forex or CFD trading stands to gain a lot. Specifically, they can benefit by learning to use the MetaTrader 4 platform. If that someone is you, you’ve come to the right place.
In this text, we’ll offer an introductory guide on how to access and use MetaTrader 4 (MT4). We will use the terminal version (the one you download) as our reference point and teach you key features. You’ll learn to open trades, locate key information, and have an idea of how to progress your knowledge further.
Where to access MetaTrader 4
To learn the platform, you’ll, of course, need a way to access it. And logic would dictate that the online trading platform’s own website is a good place to start. However, at the time of writing, the website seems a bit confused. No matter what you do, it downloads MetaTrader 5 to your device. And, while MT5 is a valuable tool, it’s less widely available and not the point of this text.
So our search continues. The next easiest way is to find an online broker that offers both MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and a demo trading account. Luckily, you’ve found one already! You can open a demo account right here at T4Trade and gain full access to a trial version of MetaTrader 4 (MT4). More importantly, choosing this option connects you to your CFD broker’s server immediately. As a result, the experience closely matches what you can expect when you start trading.
Once you open your account, download the platform, and log in, you can start learning.
MetaTrader 4 – Watchlist and Charts
The most prominent things on your screen once you open up MetaTrader 4 are your watchlist and charts. The former is usually in the upper right-hand corner, and the latter take up the middle of your screen. Now’s also a good time to mention an important feature of MetaTrader 4. It is highly modular, allowing you to move and resize features to fit your preferences.
MetaTrader 4 key features: Watchlist and charts
Let’s start with the Watchlist or Market Watch — it’s the list of assets you can trade. By default, you’ll see several key details on the screen. These include the trading instrument tickers or their abbreviations, along with their bid price and ask price.
By right-clicking the Watchlist, you’ll see a list of features, split into three segments. The first segment concerns the asset you have selected and lets you glean additional info, open charts for your trading instruments, and open trading orders. The segment won’t show up if you haven’t selected any assets. We’ll cover these features in more depth a bit later.
The next segment controls what shows up on the watchlist. The Hide button removes assets, with Hide All removing all assets that don’t have charts open. The Show All button is intuitive and adds all available assets to the watchlist, and the Symbols button lets you handpick what to add. The last button, Sets, is a crucial feature for keeping your trading interface organised. It lets you save your current watchlist as a set that you can then reopen at any time.
Most traders will want multiple sets that let them easily track different asset groups that match their current trading scenario. If you’re a beginner trader, you don’t need to go that in-depth, but consider crafting a set with the trading instruments that you like, so that you avoid the clutter of seeing everything at once and the need to search for your asset before you open your position. In time, you’ll get more refined in your trading preferences and craft your lists accordingly.
The last set of features dictates the columns that show up in the watchlist. These just add some at-a-glance information but are mostly up to personal preference.
MT4 Trading Charts
Before we go over how you can open your trading orders, we need to look at charts and some of their baseline features. As we said earlier, to open a chart, you’ll right-click an instrument from the Watchlist. There, select the Chart Window option and you’ll see your new chart.
There are multiple ways to manipulate a chart. The first is by right-clicking it. There, you’ll see options to trade, see active objects and indicators, save your current object/indicator setup as a template, and set timeframes. All of these features are useful, but most are readily available elsewhere.
The easier way to change what’s on your chart is from the bar above. There, you’ll see buttons to set timeframes (1, 5, or 15 minutes, 1 or 4 hours, a day, a week, or a month by default), and options to draw on your chart. One more row above, to the right, you’ll see options to zoom in and out, change your chart type, and open/save your indicator templates. These cover most of the baseline features that right-clicking does, but are much more accessible.
To open indicators, you can either go to the very top bar on your screen, click Insert, Indicators, and then select the one you like. Alternatively, you can go to the Navigator (under the watchlist by default, openable by pressing ctrl + N or the Navigator button near the top of your screen that looks like a folder with a star), open the indicators there, and drag them over the chart you’d like to apply them to.
Learning to properly apply visual indicators to charts is a crucial part of MT4 trading. We can’t provide you with a cookie-cutter guide, so we recommend researching some indicator setups for the assets or asset groups you’re interested in.
Open positions on MetaTrader 4
Finally, we get to the central part of learning to use MetaTrader 4 (MT4), making actual trades. To open a trading order, you can right-click an asset on your watchlist and select New Order, find the same feature under trading when you right-click a chart, or press the new order button near the top of your screen. If you want to make things easier for yourself, you can select an asset and press F9 to access the same menu.
In the order window, you’ll be able to set the volume of your trade, stop loss and take profit levels, additional comments as reminders for yourself, and the order type (if available). The default order type is instant execution, which will just open the order at the current price. You can buy an asset, which means you’ll profit when the price rises, or sell, which means you’ll earn money when the trading instrument depreciates.
There are also pending orders. There are four types here:
- Buy limit: opens a buy order when the price reaches a point below the current one.
- Buy stop: opens a buy order when the price reaches a point above the current one.
- Sell limit: opens a sell order when the price reaches a point above the current one.
- Sell stop: opens a sell order when the price reaches a point below the current one.
Keep in mind that pending orders work in the opposite way when buying or selling. The limit order, for instance, buys at a price above and sells at a price below.
One-click MT4 trading
You may have noticed the Buy and Sell buttons on your charts. These are one-click trading buttons, which let you open orders with a single click. However, you’ll need to enable one-click trading before you can use these buttons.
To do this, you can either click one of the buttons and accept the prompts that pop up, or if you already refused, go to tools in the top bar, press Options, go to the Trade window, and check One Click Trading, which will open the prompts again. Accept those and the feature will be enabled in your account.
One-click trading is extremely useful for high-precision strategies. You can add or remove the one-click trading buttons from a chart by right-clicking it and pressing One Click Trading, or via the alt + T hotkey.
MT4 Trading Terminal – Close trades and more
All that’s left now as far as the baseline features go is closing your trade. You can do that in the Trading Terminal, which we’ll cover next.
The bar at the bottom of your screen is the Trading Terminal, and in general, all your account data will be situated here. In the trading tab, which is the default, you’ll see your open and pending orders. To terminate an order, press the X on the right-hand side or right-click it and press Close Order.
There are some other very useful features in the right-click menu. You can set take profits and stop losses via the Modify Order command, which is useful for one-click trading since it doesn’t have any by default. You can also employ trailing stops, which are useful when you believe an asset will follow a trend and want your stop to terminate the order when the trend reverses, rather than setting it at the current time.
Other features here let you access your trading history, as well as informational content like news and articles, and communications from your broker via the Mail tab. You can also download custom indicators from the community via the Code Base tab.
Let’s set that aside for now and look at a specific example of how a trade may look in MetaTrader 4 (MT4).
Putting it into practice
Let’s start with an example of opening a simple forex trade with instant execution.
- Go to your watchlist, and find a symbol you like. We’ll use EURUSD for this example.
- Right-click EURUSD and open the chart window.
- Based on the chart information, predict whether the price will rise or fall.
- Open the new order window by right-clicking the asset in the watchlist or chart, or by pressing F9 on your keyboard.
- Set your trading volume, take profits, and stop losses.
- Press buy or sell to open your position.
- If you want to close the position before it hits the take profit/stop loss levels, go to the trading terminal at the bottom of your screen, go to the trade tab, and press the x on the right, or right-click and select Close Order.
Now let’s look at the same example for one-click MT4 trading.
- Go to your watchlist
,and find a symbol you like. We’ll use EURUSD for this example. - Right-click EURUSD and open the chart window.
- Based on the chart information, predict whether the price will rise or fall.
- Open the one-click trading option in the right-click menu or by pressing alt + T.
- Set your volume and press Buy or Sell to open an order.
- *If you want, you can then add take profit or stop loss points by right-clicking the trade in your terminal and selecting modify or delete order
- To terminate the position, go to the trading terminal at the bottom of your screen, go to the trade tab, and press the x on the right, or right-click and select Close Order.
Remarques:: Setting take profits and stop losses isn’t absolutely necessary, but is highly recommended for beginner traders.
Future considerations
The great thing about MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is that it’s a trading platform that grows with you. Now that you’ve mastered the basics, you may want to learn more. Here are some considerations for what you can do or learn about next:
- Customising the interface: Moving things around is simple, but finding the right layout to match your preferences will increase your comfort and longevity.
- Hotkeys: We mentioned some in the text, but memorising hotkeys for the features you often use can make navigating the platform much simpler. Plus, you’ll feel like a real pro trader when you master them.
- Indicateurs: Researching optimal indicators for your trading preferences and creating templates to speed up the process of applying them is always a good idea. Finding the right custom indicators can also be a part of this process.
- EAs: For those interested in algorithmic trading. If you’re tech-savvy you might even consider making your own.
- Backtesting: If you want to come up with your own trading strategy and experiment, backtesting is a great way to test whether it works. MetaTrader 4’s backtesting features let you verify your strategy against real past market conditions.
Tweaking your MT4 platform, learning the hotkeys, and learning complex features can sound intimidating. However, if you like trading, it can also be fun if you take it at your own pace. We suggest devoting at least some of your learning routine to MetaTrader 4 (MT4) since it pays off in dividends, both for feel and function.
Clause de non-responsabilité: Ces informations ne doivent pas être considérées comme un conseil ou une recommandation d'investissement, mais uniquement comme une communication marketing
