What keeps MT4 relevant after two decades
MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences years ago, nudging brokers toward MT5. Still, most retail forex traders stayed put. The reason is not complicated: MT4 has twenty years of muscle memory behind it. Thousands of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts were built for MT4. Migrating to MT5 means rebuilding that entire library, and few people would rather keep trading than recoding.
I spent time testing both platforms side by side, and the gap is marginal for most strategies. MT5 adds a few extras such as more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but the charting is very similar. If you're weighing up the two, MT4 still holds its own.
Setting up MT4 without the usual headaches
The install process is quick. Where people waste time is getting everything configured correctly. On first launch, MT4 shows four charts squeezed onto one window. Clear the lot and start fresh with the instruments you actually trade.
Save yourself repeating the same setup by using templates. Configure your go-to indicators once, then save it as a template. After that you can load it onto other charts in two clicks. Minor detail, but over months it adds up.
Something most people miss: open Tools > Options > Charts and check "Show ask line." By default MT4 displays the bid price by default, which makes your entries look off by the spread amount.
How reliable is MT4 backtesting?
MT4's built-in strategy tester allows you to run Expert Advisors against historical data. That said: the reliability of those results hinges on your tick data. The default history data from MetaQuotes is interpolated, meaning it fills in missing ticks mathematically. For anything beyond a rough sanity check, grab third-party tick 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 share screenshots with 25% modelling quality and wonder why their live results don't match.
Backtesting is where MT4 earns its reputation, but it's only as good as the data you give it.
MT4 indicators beyond the defaults
MT4 comes with 30 built-in technical indicators. Most traders never touch them all. But where MT4 gets interesting lives in community-made indicators coded in MQL4. There are thousands available, ranging from tweaked versions main page of standard tools to elaborate signal panels.
Adding a custom indicator is simple: place the .ex4 or .mq4 file into the MQL4/Indicators folder, reboot MT4, and you'll find it in the Navigator panel. One thing to watch is quality control. Publicly shared indicators are hit-and-miss. Some are well coded and maintained. Many stopped working years ago and may crash your terminal.
When adding third-party indicators, check when it was last updated and if other traders report issues. A poorly written indicator doesn't only show wrong data — it can lag MT4.
The MT4 risk controls you're probably not using
You'll find a few native risk management options that a lot of people skip over. The most useful is the maximum deviation setting in the new order panel. This defines how much slippage you'll accept on market orders. Leave it at zero and you're accepting whatever price the broker gives you.
Stop losses are obvious, but the trailing stop function is overlooked. Right-click an open trade, select Trailing Stop, and define the pip amount. Your stop loss moves automatically as price moves in your favour. It won't suit every approach, but for trend-following it removes the temptation to sit and watch.
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
EAs sounds appealing: program your strategy and stop staring at charts. In reality, a huge percentage of them lose money over any decent time period. EAs advertised with flawless equity curves are usually fitted to past data — they worked on historical data and break down once the market does something different.
That doesn't mean all EAs are a waste of time. Some traders develop custom EAs to handle specific, narrow tasks: entering at a specific time, calculating lot sizes, or exiting positions at predetermined levels. These utility-type EAs tend to work because they handle defined operations that don't require discretion.
Before running any EA with real money, use a demo account for no less than a few months. Forward testing is more informative than backtesting alone.
Using MT4 outside Windows
The platform was designed for Windows. If you're on macOS deal with friction. The traditional approach was emulation, which did the job but came with visual bugs and the odd crash. A few brokers now offer macOS versions wrapped around Crossover or similar wrappers, which work more smoothly but still aren't built from scratch for Mac.
The mobile apps, available for both Apple and Android devices, work well for monitoring your account and tweaking stops. Doing proper analysis on a phone screen is pushing it, but closing a trade from your phone is genuinely handy.
Look into whether your broker has a proper macOS version or just Wine under the hood — the difference in stability is noticeable.