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Overview of MT4 MetaQuotes Software developed MetaTrader 4, commonly referred to as MT4. It was released in 2005, but it quickly became popular because of its simple interface combined with customizable trading tools and a powerful back-end that allowed the smooth execution of trades. Whereas the original design for MT4 supported forex trading, brokers have since expanded their offerings to include other asset classes: CFDs, indices, commodities, and even cryptocurrencies. Probably the most striking feature of MT4 is the scripting language it offers, called MQL4, or MetaQuotes Language 4, through which it provides access to automated trading. It offers traders an opportunity to develop, backtest, and execute their own trading programs or use already set ones-"Expert Advisors" (EAs). These EAs can automatically open and close positions for them, based on predefined conditions and rules, in this way excluding emotional trading decisions and allowing these strategies to be executed successfully. Core Features of MetaTrader 4 Ease of Use: One of the most distinctive features that make MT4 so special is the user-friendly interface it has. It is very simple and thus easy to use, even for those beginners with minimal experience in online trading. Real-time quotes, charts customizable by different settings, and detailed account information can be obtained in one main window for easy management, making it easier to handle multiple trades at once. Charting Tools: MT4 boasts impressive charting capabilities. It allows users to monitor several charts simultaneously, with the ability to switch between any desired time frames-from one minute to one month-and to apply from a huge variety of indicators and technical analysis tools to those charts. Over 30 built-in technical indicators are supported within the platform, such as Moving Averages, MACD, RSI, and Bollinger Bands. Of course, proprietary indicators can also be developed using MQL4. Automated Trading (Expert Advisors): Probably the most attractive aspect of MT4 is its ability to develop and execute automated trading strategies, better known as EAs. These programs can be set to monitor the markets for certain conditions to occur and execute trades when those conditions are met. This can be done by writing personalized EAs using MQL4 or downloading ready-made EAs from the MetaTrader Market. Backtesting: MT4 allows backtesting, which means one can check his strategy against historical data before using it in live markets. This feature would help a trader in changing trading strategies and checking their effectiveness under numerous market conditions. Customizable Alerts: MT4 allows you to set up price alerts and notifications so that you never miss an important market move. Their alert might be delivered through on-platform pop-up notifications or via email. Multiple Order Types: MT4 has various order types, including market, pending orders, stop orders, and trailing stops. This large array enables traders to carry out different strategies and manage their risks effectively. Mobile Trading: The MetaTrader 4 mobile application is available on both Android and iOS devices. This simply means that traders can manage their accounts, monitor markets, and execute trades on the go. Security: MT4 places great emphasis on security. All data interchanged by the client terminal and servers is encrypted with 128-bit keys, while the platform allows the use of public-key cryptography for secure account management. MetaTrader Market and Signals: MT4 has access to the MetaTrader Market, where trading robots and indicators can be bought or even downloaded for free. There is also a signal service that allows the user to follow more experienced traders' trades and even copy them entirely. Advantages of MetaTrader 4 Accessibility and Compatibility: MT4 is highly accessible because it supports a wide range of operating systems such as Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. Due to the web terminal in its place, users can log into the platform from any device that has a browser, which means flexibility in access. Customization: Customization is one of the favorite reasons why traders love this platform. The users can orient the platform to suit their specific trading style and needs, such as modifying charts, templates, or even creating custom tools using the MQL4 language. Strong Community Support: MetaTrader 4 has a huge and active community. There exist lots of online forums, communities, and marketplaces where traders share strategies of trading, EAs, indicators, and even tips. Due to this great support network, it is easy to find resources and learn how to optimize the platform. Automated Trading MT4 boasts of an unrivaled automatic trading capability. One can create or download Expert Advisors, which allow traders to execute complex strategies with significantly better trade management, even when closely monitored. Stability and Performance: MT4 is known for stability and performance. The platform stays put, even when heavy trading is done, moving multiple charts, several indicators, and a number of EAs. Broker Support: Because MT4 is so widely adopted by brokers around the world, traders can easily find a brokerage that supports the platform. This broad compatibility with brokers is actually one of the reasons MT4 continues to dominate the retail trading industry. Limitations of MetaTrader 4 Outdated Interface: Although user-friendly, the interface of MT4 is somewhat obsolete when it comes to comparing it with more modern platforms. The simplicity is an asset in this respect, but it may not be that catching to the eye for those traders who need something more up to date with the times. Limited Asset Coverage: It does not offer the same amount of assets as some of its competitors because it only supports MT4 for forex and a few other CFDs. For instance, stock or options traders would find this platform very restrictive in trading, except probably when their brokers offer such instruments through MT4. Lack of In-Built News: Some traders believe that MT4 lacks sufficient in-built news and data feeds, while it permits integration with third-party news services. Still, this feature of real-time news remains lacking and is a major drawback for traders whose strategies are dependent on fundamental analysis in a big way. MQL4 Language Complexity: While powerful and highly customizable, MQL4 is very steep to learn. The traders who have never dealt with programming will hardly be able to create an indicator or EA of their own and have to use only ready solutions. How to Maximize Your MetaTrader 4 Experience Learn MQL4: For serious users of MT4, learning MQL4 will be extremely important. The scripting language will allow traders to design and then execute their own rules for automation without relying on third-party solutions. Expert Advisors: With EAs, you save time and take away the emotional factor of trading, as this automates your strategy. Be you a novice or an advanced trader, the advantage of using EAs means it allows you to apply strategies without you having to constantly monitor them. Backtest Your Strategies: Always backtest your new EA or any other trading strategy on historical data before using it in a live environment. In this way, you will have an idea about how the strategy is performing in various market conditions and can refine it for optimized performance. Use of Multiple Timeframes and Indicators: Enhance your trade accuracy by using multi-timeframes and technical indicators. You will be able to combine shorter and longer time frames to get a broader picture of market trends and price movements. Leverage the MetaTrader Market and Community: Take advantage of the vast amount of resources on offer between the MetaTrader Market and online forums. Whether it be for new trading tools or input into how to best optimize the terminal, the MT4 community is a great partner to have on board. Conclusion: The Longevity of MetaTrader 4 It's old but still holds the biggest share in the retail trading industry with the solidity, flexibility, and great support it has received from the community. This, combined with an intuitive interface, makes it possible for traders of all skill levels to use automated trades. However, the constant coming up with newer and flashier platforms with more functionalities is gradually pitting MT4 against tough competition. In fact, the system MetaTrader 5, MT5, can boast extra features like more time frames, indicators, and asset classes; however, many traders would prefer MT4 because of its simplicity and the wide, already-existing resources it boasts of. It would keep on catering to traders in search of a stable, customizable, and adequately supported platform. Both novice and professional traders would find the necessary tools and functionality in MT4 to achieve success in present turbulent markets.

WHAT IS A FOREX? Forex is the marketplace where various world currencies are traded. The forex market is the largest and is the easiest to liquidate within the world, with trillions of dollars changing hands a day. there’s no centralized location, rather the Forex market is a network of banks, brokers, institutions, and individual traders Many entities, from financial institutions to individual investors, have currency needs, and should also speculate on the direction of a specific pair of currencies movement. They post their orders to shop for and sell currencies on the network in order that they can interact with other currency orders from other parties. The forex market is open 24 hours each day, five days every week, apart from holidays. Currencies should trade on a vacation if a minimum of the country/global market is open for business. 3 SIMPLE STEPS TO MAKE YOUR FIRST TRADE IN FOREX Select a currency pair When trading forex you are exchanging the value of one currency for another. In other words, you will always buy one currency while selling another at the same time. Because of this, you will always trade currencies in a pair. Most new traders will start out by trading the most commonly offered pairs of major currencies, but you can trade any currency pair that we have available as long as you have enough money in your account. For this walkthrough, we’ll look at EUR/USD (Euro/ U.S. Dollar). Analyze the market Research and analysis should be the foundation of your trading endeavors. Without these, you’re operating on emotion. This doesn’t typically end well. When you first start researching, you’ll find a whole wealth of forex resources – which may seem overwhelming at first. But as you research a particular currency pair, you’ll find valuable resources that stand out from the rest. You should regularly look at current and historical charts, monitor the news for economic announcements, check indicators and perform other technical and fundamental analyses. We’ll talk more about specific types of research later on. Pick your position If you’ve traded stocks, bonds, or other financial products, you know that you can usually only speculate on the one direction of the market: up. Forex trading is a little different. Because you are buying one currency, while selling another at the same time you can speculate on up and down movements in the market. WITH A BUY POSITION you believe that the value of the base currency will rise compared to the quote currency. If you’re buying EUR/USD, you believe the price of the euro will strengthen against the dollar. In other words, you believe the euro is bullish (and the US dollar is bearish). WITH A SELL POSITION, you believe that the value of the base currency will fall compared to the quote currency. If you’re selling EUR/USD, you believe the price of the euro will weaken against the dollar. In other words, you believe the euro is bearish (and the US dollar is bullish). ADVANTAGES OF FOREX TRADING A. Ability to go long or go short While you’ll go short on other markets by using derivative products, like CFDs, short sale is an inherent part of trading forex. This is because you’re always selling one currency (the quote currency) to shop for another (the base currency). The price of a forex pair is what proportion one unit of the bottom currency is worth within the quote currency. ● For Instance:– within the forex pair GBP/EUR, GBP is that the base currency and EUR is the quote currency. If GBP/EUR is trading at 1.12156, then one pound is worth 1.12156 euros. If you think that the pound goes to extend against the euro, you’d buy the pair (going long). If you think that the pound will decrease in value against the euro, you’d sell the pair (going short). Your profit or loss will depend upon the extent to which you get your prediction right, meaning it’s possible to profit whichever way the market moves. B. Forex market hours The foreign exchange market is open 24 hours a day, five days a week – forex can be traded from 9pm Sunday to 10pm Friday (GMT). These long hours are because forex transactions are completed between parties directly, over the counter (OTC), instead of through a central exchange. And because forex may be a truly global market, you’ll always cash in of various active session’s forex trading hours. It is important to recollect that the forex market’s opening hours will vary in March, April, October and November, as countries shift to sunlight savings on different days. C. High liquidity in forex The FX market is the most liquid market within the world, meaning there is an outsized number of buyers and sellers looking to form a trade at any given time. Each day, over $5 trillion dollars of currency is converted by individuals, companies, and banks – and therefore the overwhelming majority of this activity is meant to get a profit. The high liquidity in forex means transactions are often completed quickly and simply, therefore the transaction costs – or spreads – are often very low. This creates opportunities for traders to speculate on price movements of just a few pips. D. Forex volatility The high volume of currency trades each day translates to billions of dollars every minute, which makes the price movements of some currencies extremely volatile. You can potentially reap large profits by speculating on price movements in either direction. However, volatility may be a double-edged sword – the market can quickly turn against you, so it’s important to limit your exposure with risk-management tools. E. Leverage can make your money go further CFDs are leveraged, which can make your money go further. Leverage in forex enables you to open an edge on the currency market by paying just a little proportion of the complete value of the position upfront. The profit or loss you create will reflect the complete value of the position at the purpose it’s closed, so trading on margin offers a chance to form large profits from a relatively small investment. However, it also can amplify any losses, meaning losses could exceed your initial deposit. For this reason, it’s important to think about the entire value of the leveraged forex position before trading CFDs. F. Trade a good range of currency pairs Forex trading gives you the chance to trade a good sort of currency pairs, speculating on global events and therefore the relative strength of major and minor economies. With IG, for instance , you’ll choose between over 90 currency pairs, including: Major currency pairs, eg GBP/USD, EUR/USD, and USD/JPY Minor pairs, eg USD/ZAR, SGB/JPY, CAD/CHF Emerging currency pairs, eg USD/CNH, EUR/RUB and AUD/CNH Exotic pairs, eg EUR/CZK, TRY/JPY, USD/MXN G.Hedge with forex Hedging may be a technique that will be wont to reduce the danger of unwanted moves within the forex market, by opening multiple strategic positions. Although volatility is a component of what makes forex so exciting, hedging is often an honest way of mitigating loss or limiting it to a known amount. There is a spread of strategies you’ll use to hedge forex, but one among the foremost common is hedging with multiple currency pairs. By choosing forex pairs that are positively correlated, like GBP/USD and EUR/USD, but taking positions in opposite directions, you’ll limit your downside risk. ●For instance, a loss on a brief EUR/USD position might be mitigated by an extended position on GBP/USD. Alternatively, you’ll use forex to hedge against loss in other markets, like commodities. ●For instance, because the USD/CAD generally has an inverse relationship with petroleum, it’s commonly used as a hedge against falling oil prices.

Hello, Traders! There are hundreds of assets in the market that may be interesting for trading. By studying various financial markets for a long time, we agreed on the need for automation of analytics. In order not to go through hundreds of assets every day, we created the options screener that lets you get ready for trading efficiently and make decisions with a clear head, since most of the calculations are automatic. OptionClue options screener analyzes the 400 most liquid US stocks and due to a special algorithm chooses the most relevant assets to trade. The screener saves you time and identifies the most promising assets that may start actively moving (for example when they are in sideways trends and triangles) and at the same time, it takes into account conditional «high cost» or «cheapness» of underlying options. These signals can be used in options market when trading straddles and strangles, and in the classic stock market. To learn more about the product, you can follow this link. I think, for many of you, it will become a valuable tool that helps find new trading ideas every day. I encourage you to give it a try.

Hi everybody, I searched for a similar thread but couldn't find anything close to my question. I want to ask a rather personal question and therefore hesitated to do so. If this is not adequate just let me now. How much of your entire capital do you invest in different strategies? And with different strategies I mean preserving your capital, steadily increasing it or increasing it dramatically, like Anchor-Strategy, Steady Condors, and Steady Options. I would also count investing in businesses and real estate as a valid approach. Personally, I would not only say it is a valid approach to invest in multiple assets but almost a necessity. But what about you? For example, do you allocate 10% for Steady Options and 25% for Steady Condors and 50% for Anchor Strategy? Do you own real estate? Do you plan on doing so? I know, I already can hear "you have to answer this question for yourself" and "depends on your risk tolerance". But I want to know your opinion and experience on how you would approach investing, now that you know what it takes. What would YOU do if you started from 0 again? I'm not interested in answers like I could imagine doing this and that. I would expect something along the lines. First I would start saving x amount of money while I learn the Y-Strategy with paper trading. After z time I would then use x amount of money in A-Strategy until I reach point S (some amount of money). At this point, I would still do Y-Strategy but also get my hands on Strategy Z, which promises higher returns. And so on. I'm aware that this is a question not particularly related to SO but I value your opinions and at least to me a plan for investing is the absolute most important aspect. It's like having an exit strategy for your trades before you open them, just the other way around. Why do I want to know your experiences? Because I seek a rough guidance on approaching investing. I would like to compare each other approaches. I think this topic is a significant aspect of investing and therefore for trading. It's equally important for beginners as it is for experienced investors and traders.