Have you ever wondered why MetaTrader 4 (or MT4 as it is more commonly known), is chosen by forex brokers such as Vantage FX to be their primary trading platform? Contrary to popular belief, the MT4 platform isn’t actually the most user friendly, fastest, or even the easiest platform to manage trades on. But in spite of this, it continues to streak further out in front of its competition as the number one choice for forex traders and forex brokers alike.
Just what is it about the MT4 platform that makes it so irresistible? We take a look at a few of the key reasons for its popularity below:
Fully Customizable Charting Options
If you’ve ever come across a trader sharing their charts with the community on social media or forums, then chances are that the charts that they screenshotted were in fact MT4 charts. The look and feel of MT4 charts are so familiar and deeply ingrained into the forex trading community’s psyche that anything else almost looks wrong.
The MT4 platform has familiar square menu aesthetics that look like they have come directly out of an early 2000’s computer documentary. The grid structure and up/down locked format means that no matter how you’re zoomed or positioned, the view is a consistent one. The market watch list and currency pair tabs lining the bottom of the screen depending on your personal profile preference. The look and feel of the MT4 platform is as ingrained into the forex trading community as the markets themselves.
The ability of the MT4 platform to be able to maintain its consistent aesthetics, while at the same time offering forex traders the option to customize their own charting profiles with chart studies and indicators is unmatched. Whether it’s drawing consistent trend lines that lock to the tops or bottoms of both candle wicks and bodies, all the way through to drawing Fibonacci retracements with your own custom levels and colors and colors included, MT4 charts lead the way.
The Ability to Attach and Code Custom Indicators
As we touched on above, the ability to attach and code fully customized indicators is unmatched by MT4s competition. Alongside the stock standard indicator offering that every trading platform has featured since just about the beginning of time, the MT4 platform has moved up into a league of its own by opening up fully customizable options to the mainstream.
Built-in indicators are those that are already in the platform and cannot trade automatically. They are intended for the implementation of analytical functions only. Custom Indicators on the other hand, are a technical indicator written independently in addition to those already integrated into the MT4 platform.
While an element of coding experience is ideal, the MQL4 coding language is highly logical which means you can get by after learning at a very high level. If however you still aren’t comfortable as a coder, the fact that the MT4 platform is so widely adopted in the forex trading space means that you won’t have any trouble finding a proficient coder to place your order with.
Just keep in mind that before you start putting your time into either coding a custom MT4 indicator yourself or spending time online searching for the perfect coder to work alongside, the popularity of the platform means that more than likely your idea has already been brought to life by someone else. The MT4 platform allows you to simply download the file, place it in the relevant indicators folder and then attach it to any chart.
Execute Automated Trading Strategies with Expert Advisors (EAs)
While customizable indicators allow you to analyze the markets, they cannot trade on your behalf. This is where trading robots called expert advisors come in.
An EA is a mechanical trading system that a trader links up to their selected MT4 chart. It then starts to run when an event that can be handled by the code is triggered by the market. These could be events of initialization and deinitialization, event of a new tick receipt, a timer event, depth of market changing event, chart event and custom events. An EA can both inform you about a possibility to trade if you just want a signal, or it can automatically execute trades on an account by directly sending orders to your forex broker’s trade server.
Just like we spoke about above when it came to indicators, the massive popularity of the MT4 platform has meant that there are literally endless lists of EAs online for you to browse through, download and trade on your behalf. While we all know that there is no such thing as a set and forget holy grail that will print money forever, we can see that every EA has an ideal set of market conditions where it becomes profitable. The hard part is just knowing when to turn which EA on and off!
No matter your trading style or the system that you trade, if it relies on visual elements on the charts, then MT4 should be your go to platform. Make the switch to a leading MT4 forex broker such as Vantage FX today.