As described by most forex traders, MetaTrader 4 — is by far the top forex trading platform you can use today. The MT4’s trading platform is an all-in-one platform for all of your forex trading needs — from market analysis to all the additional services a forex broker will offer.
Although MT4 was initially created for Windows, the application is now also available in Mac. And if you’re wondering what MT4 application to use for your Mac, you can open a meta trader 4 for your mac here.
Here’s a beginner’s guide in using the MT4:
What’s inside the platform?
There are four main panels on the MT4 platform, the navigator, market watch, terminal, and chart panels. Let’s discuss each one and some of their uses.
1. Navigator Panel:
This panel enables you to access your trading accounts. This also allows users to create a trial account to test new strategies before trading in the market. Additionally, the navigator panel offers a feature to add various indicators — trends, oscillators, and volumes — on your chart panel. You can even customize your own indicators through MQL4 or MetaQuotes Language 4, the integrated programming language for developing indicators in MT4.
2. Market Watch:
This is where you’ll find all the various instruments that are tradable, such as forex pairs, energies, precious metals, and indices; and it also displays the current bid and asking prices alongside its instrument symbol.
The market watch panel also allows you to have access to a set of options by clicking a specific instrument symbol. These options are:
- Chart window – This opens a new chart of your selected instrument.
- New order – This opens a trade on your selected instrument.
- Depth of market – This will display the bid and ask prices of a specific instrument.
- Tick chart – This will display the sales activity of the forex pair.
- Specification – This will display the contract specifications of a particular instrument — swap rates, contract size, and spreads.
3. Terminal Panel:
This panel allows quick access to your trading history and account. The terminal panel displays various tabs along the bottom side of the panel, such as:
- Trade – Allows you to view your pending orders and open positions.
- News – This displays the relevant and important trading headlines.
- Account history – This displays all your executed trades. You can also view your withdrawal, deposits, profits and loss, and credits in this tab.
- Alerts – This displays the list of alerts and notifications, such as instruments reaching a specified price.
- Mailbox – This is where you can view the messages sent via this platform.
- Journal – This tab lets you view your account’s systems messages, such as filled or edited orders, login times, and closed positions.
4. Chart Panel:
The chart panel is probably the most recognizable panel of the trading platform, as this panel shows a particular instrument’s price movement. The charts can be viewed as lines, price bars, or candlesticks. And if you’re tracking multiple instruments, this panel can display multiple charts on a single screen. Additionally, this panel also allows you to view the charts in various timeframes, from one minute to one month charts.
MetaTrader 4 trading:
How to open a currency pair trade:
The easiest way to set up a trade in MT4 is to utilize the Order window to place an order on the market by doing these steps:
- Select the chosen currency pair by clicking the Window tab of your MT4 platform.
- Select New Window
- Click New Order on your toolbar, or open the Order window by pressing F9.
- Enter your chosen trade size in the Volume box.
- Choose Market Execution in the order type
- Click sell or buy
How to close a trade:
When you’re done opening the trade, of course, you’ll eventually need to close the trade. Here’s how to close:
- Click the Trade tab from Terminal window.
- Right-click any order you want to close on the Trade tab.
- Select Close Order
- Select the Close button on the Order window to close the trade.
How to add currency pairs:
If there’s a specific currency pair that you’d like to trade, but it’s not visible in the Market Watch window, then follow these steps to add currency pairs:
- Press CTRL+U to open Symbols
- In the Symbols window, look for the currency pair you’d like to add.
- Click the symbol and click Show to add the currency pair.
Closing thoughts:
Although setting up and placing trades in MT4 is easy, learning the platform’s powerful features and intricacies to fully take advantage of the program can actually take time and effort. May you use this guide as a stepping stone to start trading in the MT4 platform.
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