What keeps MT4 relevant after two decades
MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences a while back, pushing brokers toward MT5. Yet most retail forex traders kept using MT4. The reason is not complicated: MT4 works, and people trust what works. More than a decade's worth of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts were built for MT4. Moving to MT5 means rewriting 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 including more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but the core charting feels nearly identical. If you're weighing up the two, MT4 is more than enough.
Setting up MT4 without the usual headaches
Installation takes a few minutes. What actually causes problems is configuration. On first launch, MT4 shows four charts tiled across the screen. Clear the lot and start fresh with the pairs you care about.
Save yourself repeating the same setup by using templates. Build your go-to indicators once, then right-click and save as template. Then you can load it onto other charts instantly. Sounds trivial, but over weeks it makes a difference.
One setting worth changing: go to Tools > Options > Charts and check "Show ask line." The default view is the bid price on the chart, which can make your entries look off 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. That said: the quality of those results depends entirely on your tick data. The default history data from MetaQuotes is modelled, meaning gaps between real data points are estimated using algorithms. If you're testing something beyond a rough sanity check, grab real tick data from a provider like Dukascopy.
That quality percentage in the results tells you more than the profit figure. Below 90% suggests the results aren't trustworthy. People occasionally show off backtests with 25% modelling quality and wonder why the EA fails in real conditions.
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 ships with 30 default technical indicators. Few people use more than five or six. But the real depth is in community-made indicators built with MQL4. The MQL5 marketplace alone has a massive library, spanning simple moving average variations to full trading dashboards.
The install process is painless: copy the .ex4 or .mq4 file into the MQL4/Indicators folder, reboot MT4, and it appears in the Navigator panel. One thing to watch is reliability. Free indicators range from excellent to broken. Some are well coded and maintained. Some haven't been updated since 2015 and can freeze your terminal.
When adding third-party indicators, look at when it was last updated and if people in the forums report issues. A poorly written indicator doesn't only show wrong data — it can slow down MT4.
Risk management settings most MT4 traders ignore
MT4 has several built-in risk management tools that most traders skip over. The most useful is the maximum deviation setting in the order window. This controls the amount of slippage you'll accept on market orders. If you don't set it and best metatrader 4 brokers you're accepting whatever price is available.
Stop losses are obvious, but MT4's trailing stop feature is worth exploring. Click on an open trade, select Trailing Stop, and set the pip amount. The stop follows with price moves in your favour. It won't suit every approach, but on trending pairs it removes the temptation to sit and watch.
These settings take a minute to configure and they remove a lot of the emotional decision-making.
Expert Advisors — before you trust a robot with your money
Expert Advisors on MT4 sounds appealing: define your rules and let the machine execute. The reality is, a huge percentage of them lose money over any meaningful time period. Those advertised with perfect backtest curves are often over-optimised — they performed well on historical data and break down once market conditions change.
None of this means all EAs are useless. A few people build their own EAs for one particular setup: opening trades at session opens, calculating lot sizes, or closing trades at set levels. These smaller, focused scripts are more reliable because they handle mechanical tasks that don't require interpretation.
When looking at Expert Advisors, run them on a demo account for at least several weeks in different conditions. Live demo testing tells you more than backtesting alone.
MT4 on Mac and mobile: what actually works
The platform was designed for Windows. Mac users face a workaround. The old method was Wine or PlayOnMac, which mostly worked but introduced rendering issues and occasional crashes. Certain brokers now offer macOS versions using Wine under the hood, which are better but remain wrappers at the end of the day.
MT4 mobile, on both Apple and Android devices, are surprisingly capable for monitoring positions and managing trades on the move. Doing proper analysis on a mobile device isn't realistic, but closing a trade on the go is worth having.
Check whether your broker offers real Mac support or a compatibility layer — it makes a real difference day to day.