Why traders still pick MT4 over newer platforms
MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences a while back, steering brokers toward MT5. Still, most retail forex traders haven't moved. The reason is not complicated: MT4 has twenty years of muscle memory behind it. More than a decade's worth of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts were built for MT4. Moving to MT5 means rebuilding that entire library, and the majority view source of users can't justify the effort.
I spent time testing MT4 and MT5 side by side, and the gap is less dramatic than the marketing suggests. MT5 adds a few extras including more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but chart functionality is about the same. Unless you need MT5-specific features, MT4 still holds its own.
Setting up MT4 without the usual headaches
The install process is quick. The part that trips people up is configuration. By default, MT4 loads with four charts tiled across the screen. Shut them all and start fresh with the instruments you actually trade.
Chart templates save time. Set up your preferred indicators once, then save it as a template. From there you can apply it to any new chart without redoing the work. Sounds trivial, but over months it adds up.
A quick tweak that helps: go to Tools > Options > Charts and tick "Show ask line." The default view is the bid price on the chart, which makes buy entries seem misaligned until you realise the ask price is hidden.
How reliable is MT4 backtesting?
MT4's built-in strategy tester lets you run Expert Advisors against historical data. Worth noting though: the reliability of those results depends entirely on your tick data. The default history data from MetaQuotes is interpolated, meaning gaps between real data points are estimated mathematically. If you're testing something more precise than a quick look, you need real tick data from a provider like Dukascopy.
Modelling quality is more important than the headline profit number. If it's under 90% means the results are probably misleading. People occasionally show off backtests with 25% modelling quality and can't figure out why the EA fails in real conditions.
The strategy tester is one of MT4's stronger features, but only if you feed it decent data.
Custom indicators on MT4: worth the effort?
MT4 comes with 30 standard technical indicators. Few people use more than five or six. However the real depth is in community-made indicators coded in MQL4. The MQL5 marketplace alone has thousands available, spanning basic modifications to full trading dashboards.
The install process is painless: drop the .ex4 or .mq4 file into the MQL4/Indicators folder, refresh MT4, and it appears in the Navigator panel. The risk is quality. Free indicators range from excellent to broken. A few are well coded and maintained. Many are abandoned projects and will crash your terminal.
If you're downloading custom indicators, verify when it was last updated and whether other traders report issues. Bad code doesn't only show wrong data — it can freeze MT4.
The MT4 risk controls you're probably not using
MT4 has a few native risk management tools that most traders skip over. The most useful is maximum deviation in the order window. This controls how much slippage is acceptable on market orders. If you don't set it and you're accepting whatever price comes through.
Stop losses go without saying, but MT4's trailing stop feature is overlooked. Right-click an open trade, choose Trailing Stop, and set a distance. The stop adjusts automatically as price moves into profit. Not perfect for every strategy, but if you're riding trends it takes away the temptation to micromanage the trade.
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
Expert Advisors on MT4 attract traders for obvious reasons: define your rules and let the machine execute. In practice, the majority of Expert Advisors underperform over any decent time period. Those sold with incredible historical results are often over-optimised — they worked on past prices and break down the moment the market does something different.
That doesn't mean all EAs are useless. A few people develop their own EAs for specific, narrow tasks: entering at a specific time, managing position sizing, or taking profit at predetermined levels. That kind of automation are more reliable because they do defined operations that don't require discretion.
Before running any EA with real money, run them on a demo account for no less than a few months. Live demo testing is more informative than any backtest.
MT4 on Mac and mobile: what actually works
MT4 is a Windows application at heart. Running it on Mac deal with friction. The traditional approach was Wine or PlayOnMac, which did the job but came with display glitches and the odd crash. Some brokers now offer native Mac apps built on Wine under the hood, which is an improvement but remain wrappers at the end of the day.
The mobile apps, available for both iPhone and Android, work well for watching positions and tweaking stops. Doing proper analysis on a 5-inch screen doesn't really work, but managing exits from your phone is worth having.
Check whether your broker offers a proper macOS version or just Wine under the hood — the experience varies a lot between the two.