Get more from MetaTrader 4 (MT4): Tips and tricks

Get more from MetaTrader 4 (MT4): Tips and tricks

Reading time: 7 minutes

MetaTrader 4 (MT4) has been around for more than 20 years, but its staying power in the trading world is easy to fathom: the MT4 platform combines charting, technical analysis, trade execution, and automation in one place without making traders go through hoops. With FP Markets, MetaTrader 4 gives traders access to competitive trading conditions, fast execution, and a wide selection of markets.

Make your MT4 charts work for you

The optimal way to improve your experience with MetaTrader 4 is to, first and foremost, disregard the default charts. MT4 allows traders to customise chart layouts, timeframes, colours, indicators, and analytical objects. FP Markets offers three chart types and nine timeframes on MT4, giving incredible flexibility to traders when they analyse price action.

Start by designing a chart layout that aligns with your trading style. For instance, if you are a trend trader, a clean candlestick chart with moving averages and an oscillator might be your cup of tea. Or if you’re into breakout trading, you may want a chart that shows support and resistance levels and trendlines. You can also throw in volatility indicators too.

But don’t clutter your dashboard with every available tool. Every tool you keep on-screen must have a purpose. After all, a chart overloaded with indicators can make trading decisions harder, not easier.

Save your MT4 charts as templates

Once you have created a chart, and you find it effective and suitable to your trading approach, save it as a template. This is one of many MetaTrader 4 features that can save you a lot of time. Instead of adding the same indicators one-by-one and tweaking the same settings every time you open a new chart, you can save your preferred settings and apply them elsewhere.

This feature is handy when you create templates for a trend-following strategy and another for a shorter-term setup. You can switch between them based on the market or strategy you’re analysing. So instead of squandering some time rebuilding your workspace, you can jump straight to analysis.

Profile creation is also a nifty capability that MT4 supports. It allows traders to organise groups of charts, which is useful if you follow a handful of currency pairs or trade different financial instruments.

Resist the temptation to use every indicator

MetaTrader 4 provides access to a broad range of technical indicators, with FP Markets offering more than 60 pre-installed indicators and access to additional custom indicators through the MetaTrader community.At first glance, this may seem like a trader’s dream. But this can also become every trader’s nightmare.

In trading, more indicators do not always lead to better analysis. As a matter of fact, using too many can produce conflicting signals and only contribute to analysis paralysis.

How to approach it is to assign each indicator a particular purpose. For example:

• Moving averages can help identify the broader trend
• Relative Strength Index (RSI) can supply insights about momentum
• Bollinger Bands can help you assess market volatility and price behaviour.

As with any trading tool, your strategy should serve as the North Star of your trading strategies, not the indicators.

Use multiple timeframes before entering a trade

If you’re considering a trade on a lower timeframe, check a higher timeframe first. A setup that seems attractive on a five-minute chart may look different when viewed against the broader market structure. MetaTrader 4 smooths out that issue because with it, you can move between nine available timeframes. Of course, having this feature at your disposal does not guarantee a winning trade. Viewing multiple timeframes provides additional context, which can help prevent decisions based solely on a narrow slice of price action.

Turn on price alerts

MetaTrader 4 includes customisable alerts that can notify you when a particular market condition is met. This means, you don’t need to stare at a chart all day to detect any discernible movement. It’s a feature that attracts traders who have other commitments during the day.

Sometimes, a good trade is one that you do not force. Alerts can encourage patience. Instead of entering a trade because you are watching the market and feel that you need to do something, you can set your conditions in advance and wait for them to occur.

Use one-click trading carefully

MT4 has a one-click trading feature that allows traders to execute trades straight from the chart. FP Markets also supports one-click trading on MT4, along with the ability to place and modify stop-loss and take-profit levels on charts. For active traders, this could make execution more efficient.

But before enabling one-click execution, make sure to understand exactly how the feature works and you’ve checked your position size. The goal isn’t to trade faster, but to execute your decisions more efficiently.

Keep Stop-Loss and Take-Profit levels visible

With MetaTrader 4, traders can see trade levels displayed on their charts. It makes open and pending orders, stop-loss and take-profit levels easier to see relative to current price action. Use this visual feedback to keep your risk management in full view. It’s so easy to focus on where the price of an asset might head while forgetting how much you could lose if the market moves against you. Having your trade levels on a chart can provide such a useful reality check.

Use the strategy tester

If you’ve gotten around the Expert Advisor feature, we recommend that you experiment it on a demo account first. MetaTrader enables you to examine how an automated strategy would have performed against past market data. Backtesting doesn’t work like magic, of course, and historical performance does not predict future results. But testing can help a trader identify obvious weaknesses in the system before committing capital.

Take your MT4 trading setup further with FP Markets

Explore MetaTrader 4 with FP Markets and get blown away with a trading platform built for analysis, execution, and flexibility. Open an FP Markets account today and start exploring what MT4 can do for your goals and strategy!