MT4 in 2026: why it refuses to die
MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences years ago, pushing brokers toward MT5. Yet most retail forex traders kept using MT4. The reason is not complicated: MT4 does one thing well. Thousands of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts only work with MT4. Moving to MT5 means rewriting that entire library, and few people don't see the point.
I spent time testing MT4 and MT5 side by side, and the differences are marginal for most strategies. MT5 adds a few extras including more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but the charting is about the same. For most retail strategies, MT4 still holds its own.
Getting MT4 configured properly the first time
Downloading and installing MT4 is the easy part. Where people waste time is getting everything configured correctly. Out of the box, MT4 loads with four charts tiled across the screen. Close all of them and start fresh with the pairs you care about.
Templates are worth setting up early. Build your usual indicators once, then save it as a template. After that you can apply it to any new chart without redoing the work. Small thing, but over months it adds up.
A quick tweak that helps: open Tools > Options > Charts and tick "Show ask line." The default view is the bid price on the chart, which can make entries appear wrong until you realise the ask price is hidden.
Backtesting on MT4: what the results actually mean
The strategy tester in MT4 lets you run Expert Advisors against historical data. Worth noting though: the accuracy of those results depends entirely on your tick data. Standard history data is not real tick data, meaning gaps between real data points are estimated mathematically. If you're testing something that needs accuracy, you need third-party tick data.
The "modelling quality" percentage is more important than the headline profit number. Anything below 90% suggests the results shouldn't be taken seriously. People occasionally share screenshots with 25% modelling quality and wonder why the EA fails in real conditions.
The strategy tester is one of MT4's stronger features, but it's only as good as the data you give it.
Custom indicators on MT4: worth the effort?
MT4 ships with 30 standard technical indicators. Few people use more than five or six. But where MT4 gets interesting comes from community-made indicators built with MQL4. The MQL5 marketplace alone has a massive library, covering everything from basic modifications to full trading dashboards.
Installing them is straightforward: copy the .ex4 or .mq4 file into the MQL4/Indicators folder, reboot MT4, and it appears in the Navigator panel. One thing to watch is reliability. Publicly shared indicators range from excellent to broken. A few are genuinely useful. Some stopped working years ago and may crash your terminal.
Before installing anything, check when it was last updated and if users mention bugs. Bad code doesn't only show wrong data — it can freeze the whole terminal.
Risk management settings most MT4 traders ignore
MT4 has some risk management options that a lot of people never configure. The most useful is the maximum deviation setting in the order window. This defines how much slippage you'll accept on market orders. Leave it at zero and you're accepting whatever price comes through.
Stop losses are obvious, but the trailing read the article stop function is overlooked. Right-click an open trade, choose Trailing Stop, and define the pip amount. Your stop loss moves when price moves in your favour. Doesn't work well in choppy markets, but if you're riding trends it reduces the need to micromanage the trade.
You can configure all of this in under five minutes and they remove a lot of the emotional decision-making.
EAs on MT4: what to realistically expect
Automated trading through Expert Advisors sounds appealing: set rules, let the code trade, walk away. In reality, most EAs fail to deliver over any extended time period. The ones advertised with incredible historical results tend to be curve-fitted — they worked on historical data and stop working once the market does something different.
That doesn't mean all EAs are useless. Some traders code their own EAs to handle well-defined entry rules: time-based entries, automating position size calculations, or closing trades at set levels. These smaller, focused scripts tend to work because they do mechanical tasks where you don't need discretion.
When looking at Expert Advisors, test on demo first for no less than several weeks in different conditions. Running it forward in real time reveals more than any backtest.
MT4 on Mac and mobile: what actually works
MT4 was built for Windows. Mac users has always been friction. The traditional approach was emulation, which was functional but came with rendering issues and the odd crash. A few brokers now offer Mac-specific builds wrapped around Crossover or similar wrappers, which is an improvement but still aren't true native apps.
MT4 mobile, available for both iOS and Android, work well for monitoring your account and tweaking stops. Serious charting work on a 5-inch screen isn't realistic, but adjusting a stop loss from your phone is genuinely handy.
It's worth confirming if your broker provides real Mac support or a compatibility layer — the experience varies a lot between the two.