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A History Of MT4, and Why the World Won’t Convert to MT5

meta-iconWhat is MT4?

MetaTrader4, which we will refer to in this article simply as MT4, is an electronic trading platform generally employed by online retail foreign exchange speculative traders. It was developed by MetaQuotes Software and published in 2005. The software is licensed to forex brokers who offer the software to their customers.

History of MT4

MetaQuotes Software Corporation was established in Russia in the year 2000. Its first product, the FX charts, was online charting software that is used for margin foreign exchange trading for Windows PCs. Its gained immediate popularity among traders because of its convenience, speed, functionality and low cost compared to other specialized software that was available at that time. The triumph of FX charts motivated MetaQuotes to commence a new, more ambitious project referred to as the MetaQuote trading platform.

Although it bore a few similarities to FX charts, it was actually a new program, written completely from scratch, with more features than its predecessor. In particular, the new platform came with its programming language, the MetaQuotes Language (MQL), which enabled the users to program their trading strategies. It turned out to be even larger success than FX charts, and before long they were working on a new program referred to Metatrader.

Metatrader added a range of features to the MetaQuotes platform trading, and was again re-written from scratch to enable it to be faster, memory intensive and less processor. In addition to being able to trade Forex and CFDs, it could also be employed to trade futures and came with a new version of the programming language called MQL2. Further improvement and development followed, including the first mobile version of MetaTrader for PDA Palm, which was an immediate success with traders.

For the next version of MetaTrader, MetaQuotes aimed to develop MT4, on the basis that it was the company‘s fourth trading platform. Again, this was completely written from scratch, and it took almost two years to complete. Even before its launch in 2005, several brokers had decided to switch over to the new platform, and soon many more brokers were rushing to switch to MT4, which rapidly became the new standard for foreign exchange trading.

MT4 was developed with MQL4, which is significantly improved programming language used to create indicators and Expert Advisors (EAs), and is largely responsible for the explosion of interest in automated trading.

Popularity

Today, MT4 is the industry standard platform for online Forex, CFD, and the future trading; and has been chosen by almost all the leading brokerage firms, including FXCM, AvaTrade and Pepperstone. In fact, it has become so popular that even MetaQuotes themselves could not convert traders to their newer and improved platform, MetaTrader5 (MT5)

MT5

MT5 was released in 2010 with a host of new features and improvements, as well as the ability to trade stocks. However, the acceptance by clients and brokers has been very slow, and it has so far failed to match the success of its predecessor.

Here’s why:

3rd Party Applications:

There is an extensive community of trading programs that has built up around MT4 and the popularity of third-party applications such as Expert Advisor (EA) and Indicator software programs that are not compatible on the new MT5 platform.

The number one reason why millions use MT4

By comparison, the range of third-party programs for MT5 is quite low, which reduces its usefulness as a tool for automated trading.

The Future of Mt4

Unless MetaQuotes can create an effective bridge from MT4 to MT5 without having to redo all the current 3rd party applications, it is hard to accept the possibility that MT4 will be discontinued or that users will be required to upgrade to MT5 any time soon.

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MT4 – The Most Widely Used Forex Platform

meta-iconWhy Millions Use MT4

Millions of traders all over the world know and use MetaTrader4 (MT4.) While being extremely user friendly and easy to learn, MT4 also offers advanced technical analysis, trading indicators, and apps compatible with Android, Linux, Windows, IOS and Mac OS. But the most popular reason that traders use MT4 is for Expert Advisors (EAs).

What is an EA?

EAs are a plugin software that connects to the MT4 platform. With EA’s, traders can automate trades in their account without having to give up their trading privileges or sign any legal documents such as an LPOA. To use an EA, all traders have to do is download it and install a simple software onto their MT4 platform.

But not every solution is without its drawbacks.

The Cons of Trading With EA’s

Most EA’s are fully automated system programmed to run as a trading robot, often unmindful of major market events and announcements. They have technical programming built in to generate trades based on the data in the MT4 chart.
Since they are robots, if you run the EA on the wrong time setting or the wrong currency pair, you could receive false trades or errors. Also, often EA’s that work for a few months could eventually become out of date if there is a lack of human intervention to keep the EA current with market conditions.

The Pros of Trading With A Trade Copier EA

In my opinion, the best EA’s are less of a robot and more of a Trade Copier. An EA that is set up as a Trade Copier is more reliable than an EA that is set up like a robot.

How? This is discussed in the following article: Trade Copier & The Human Touch