A few little tips & tricks to get more from MT4

January 9, 2023

If you’re a forex trader you’ll know that MetaTrader 4 is the king of Forex trading platforms. Not only does it allow you to place and manage orders, undertake various technical analysis functions and auto trade, it also allows you to do plenty of not-so-well-known things. Let’s talk about a few.

First, the ruler tool. This is super handy when measuring this distance (in pips) between two points… ie stop loss and entry, etc. So how do you get this tool? Simple, click on the cross hair, or press Ctrl+F and click and drag between two points. You’ll find all sorts of handy info such as pip-distance, the number of bars in a range and the date. Not bad!

Secondly, if there are some indicators, scripts or EAs that you frequently use, why not make it easier to access them. Simply right-click on the item of your choosing and select ‘Add to favourites’. Now that was simple!

When it comes to becoming a better trader, it is super beneficial to go back over previous trades to see what you did right or wrong. So for a deeper look into your closed trades in MT4, pop on over to ‘Account History’ in the terminal. Just click on a closed position, drag it on to the chart in which you placed the trade, and presto, you’ll see the entry, target, exit mark data as well as the stop less, etc. This is great to see how you can improve on your market timing, stop losses and profit targets, as well as further refining your setups.

Use a customised template that you’ve created and are sick of always switching to it when you open a new chart? Well, here’s one for you. Set up your template to exactly how you like it, right click and choose ‘Template – Save Template’, and save it as ‘Default’. Now, every time you open a new chart it will automatically have your template as the MetaTrader 4 default.

I personally find it helpful to write notes on charts so that when I’m reviewing my trades I can go back to exactly why I took the trade, emotions, thoughts, things I notice about the market, etc. To do this, head up to the Insert menu and choose ‘Insert Text’ and you can enter whatever you want. And, you can use multiple text boxes.

There you go, I hope these few little not-so-well-known tips and tricks make your MT4 life just a little bit faster and easier.