MetaTrader 5 - Review of the MT5 trading platform

MetaTrader 5 is the "latest" (albeit not new) product of the Russian company MetaQuotes, which saw the light of day at the end of 2009. Why maybe you haven't heard of him yet? Because it is offered today by 180 brokers from around the world. This is relatively little compared to MetaTrader 4, where the estimates even say about 500 companies. There is no doubt, however, that MT5 will completely drive MT4 out of the uncertain future. As of today, the manufacturer of the platform can no longer download the version marked with four, and MetaQuotes has already announced ending the sale of this product. Is it worth taking a look at MetaTrader 5 then? You will find out from our review. But one thing is certain - one day we will all be forced to do so in a way.

Admission word

The MetaTrader 5 platform made its debut on the market over 8 years ago, that is when ECN and STP brokers began to become fashionable. A new work MetaQuotes was supposed to revolutionize the Forex platform market again and leave far behind the rapidly growing competition. However, this did not happen and it quickly turned out that MT5 itself lagged behind even MT4.

Already at the outset, the new version of MetaTrader met with a huge wave of criticism, both from traders and brokers (which was influenced by the opinion of traders 🙂). This was mainly due to the "revelations" prepared by the creators. MT5 orders were executed according to the FIFO principle, and additionally, they did not allow for any hedging of positions. There were more missed "news", but over time, seeing the poor interest in the platform, MQ began to carry out bold updates (also on MT4 to which the features implemented in MT5 were added). Currently, there is no trace of FIFO or the prohibition of hedging, although brokers have been allowed to introduce them.

This review will be quite unusual. Assuming that every trader knows the MT4 platform, to a greater or lesser extent, it will be a reference point for frequent comparisons. Ready?

The test was performed on MetaTrader 5 in the Build 1730 version of 21 / 12 / 2017

Installation and login

MT5 login window

Installation is easy, fast and pleasant. The installation file from MT5 is downloaded from our broker, or from the MetaQuotes website. Then, after its launch, from the MQ server, the latest version of the platform is downloaded. Login? Nothing changed. All you have to do is choose the right server for your account and enter your login with a password. As with MT4, we can still log in from the same platform to accounts with many different brokers.

But there is a minus. For unknown reasons, MT5, like its older brother, was created only in a version dedicated to devices with an operating system from Microsoft. True, MT4 finally got it makeshift Linux and Mac versions, but still, MetaQuotes seems to want to go the same way with the 5 again. Therefore, if we use a system other than Windows, at the moment we are satisfied with the Web version with very limited functionality.

MetaTrader 5 appearance and interface

If you like the MT4 look, you will not have any problems with the five. At first glance, the differences are cosmetic. Refreshed icons, sometimes different colors, but then the same old, good MetaTrader. There were no other changes. At most there were several new tabs resulting from the extension of functionality, but we can not say that it is a completely new platform.

Personalization. The personalization option is slightly more, although these are minor changes that it is not even worth mentioning. Generally speaking, we can still set up most of the features of appearance, location and access to tools in a very wide range.

Terminal - Trade. In this window, which is very often used by traders, there is one change that can be irritating. This is particularly noteworthy for those who use the services of brokers charging fees in the formula "Market spread + commission". The column has disappeared "Commission". It is available only in the tab History. Now we don't see how much we paid to open an order until it is closed. In MT4, the commission was visible and charged in advance when opening twice - for opening and closing. And perhaps this is the reason why it was closed in the tab Retail. At MetaTrader 5, the commission for the entire order is charged at closing.

Article partner

Vantage Markets - International Forex / CFD Broker

Functions and possibilities

Trade in the Market window

Transactions. At first glance there are no differences and everything is in place. But if we look closely, we will begin to see them gradually.

In the window Market a new tab has appeared - Retail. We can find there large buttons for placing orders with one click. The spread and daily values ​​are also given High / Low. In my opinion, the entire single module is too big for MT5 windows, and thus we will not fit these buttons too much. Rather, it will end up with 3-4 instruments that we can observe at once. There was also no option to quickly add SL / TP. It is a pity, because it is a function relatively often used by traders. And unfortunately, MT5 does not automatically offer us an automatic addition of these parameters immediately after the transaction (as opposed to more and more competitors).

Depth of the market. DoM (Depth of Market) from the so-called a ladder to enter into transactions. In the case of trading in currencies, this may interest us on average, but on futures or stocks it can be quite a useful tool. The market depth window is available under the button in the upper left corner of the chart. After clicking on the blue-red icon, an additional module with a tick chart opens to us. It's difficult to talk about a real-life chart here, but maybe it's enough for some traders. Click on the red or blue arrow immediately sets the pending order. We can also open the position at the market price thanks to the buttons at the bottom.

Execution of orders. There have been some changes "inside" the platform, which we will feel only when using it on a real account. In MetaTrader 5 it is possible to partially open a position. When we trade a larger volume and the market runs out of liquidity, only a "piece" of our order can be executed, eg from 100 lots we will only make a trade for 60 lots. In MT4, it was only possible to complete or reject the entire instruction.

As some say, the transaction process itself should also be much faster. Honestly, in most cases, we will not feel it. Maybe only in a situation where we want to do dozens of orders at once.

Trailing Stop. It is not known why, but there is a value of "0" in the parameter list in Trailing foot. Clicking on it does not make TS active, and also when TS with a different value is active, selecting "0" does not make it disappear. This is what the "None" item is for. Creep. No more comments - TS works in the old way, which means flawlessly.

Pending orders. We have a little revolution here. There were 4 standard types of pending orders in MT4: Buy Limit, Sell Limit, Buy Stop, Sell Stop. In MT5 we have two more - Buy Stop Limit and Sell Stop Limit. These are orders with an additional activation level. It consists in the fact that exceeding the Stop Limit price triggers an activation and places a pending order of the Limit type. Great thing.

Available pending check orders Buy / Sell Stop Limit

Chart support. There are no spectacular changes, and the setting options remained the same. The range of three standard types of charts is supported by a novelty - tick charts. It's just that the word "supports" is not used by chance. This is merely an add-on displayed in a separate window with Market Depth. So it's hard to talk about real tick charts. There is also a tick chart in the Market window. And no - nothing has changed, except for the crosshair :-).

Tic graphs on MT5

But just the mentioned viewfinder, only on the classic charts, went through a small tuning. Now, when measuring ranges, we do not have to guess which parameter means.

Dating on MT4

Dating on MT5

When it comes to Range Bars or other, less popular types of charts, we are still doomed to implement them on the platform by using additional tools (if they are already available on MetaTrader 5).

Timeframes. However, the list of available time intervals has been extended. There are only 4 of them on MT9, while on MT5 we have as many as 21, including the rare M3, M12, H3 or H8. The one-minute hand remained the smallest scale, so we still have no seconds or ticks. It is a pity that there was no attempt to allow the user to create their own TFs.

Interesting facts - MT4 limits the number of charts that can remain active at once (approx. 25). When we overdo it, the platform can definitely slow down and, consequently, even hang. In MT5, this amount has been limited to 100, and apparently it can handle it without any problems (although our computer will probably decide about it).

Transaction history in the chart

Transaction history in the chart. It is true that in MT4 it was possible to put the history of the position on the chart, but hardly anyone knew about it, because you had to use the "hidden functionality". In addition, removing the marked objects was a chore. MT5 has improved this feature by adding it as a new parameter in the Trade tab (available in the right-click menu). A few clicks and we have everything on the plate. We can get rid of the added markings just as quickly. Plus for MetaQuotes.

Instruments. There are some news. Until now, we had a limited amount of symbols on MT4 that could be traded. You probably didn't know about it, but someone thought that the limit would be exactly 1024 symbols. This is the reason why brokers with a much wider offer were often forced to separate classes of instruments into different types of accounts, or to use other platforms. There is no such problem in MT5 - the limit has been completely lifted.

Additionally, MT4 only supports instruments CFD and/ or Forex . In MT5, the possibilities have been expanded to include stocks (real stocks, not CFDs on stocks), futures, bonds and options.

Indicators and tools. MetaTrader 5 has expanded the range of tools available as standard. As standard, MT4 offers 30 indicators, 33 chart drawing objects, 2 EAs and 4 scripts. In MT5 we have 38 indicators, 46 objects and as many as 22 analytical tools. The more interesting ones include, for example, objects for drawing Elliot waves, or a tool for inserting an additional (small) graph into the window of a normal graph as an object (you can freely change its position, instrument, interval).

Adding a chart in Picture-in-Picture mode

MetaTrader 4 platform owes its enormous popularity to accessing a huge number of custom tools that are available on the web. The relatively easy programming language MQL4 contributed to this. The network has powerful collections with pointers and vending machines, and even ready-made courses for learning programming. And all this for free.

And now we come across a big problem. MetaTrader 5 uses MQL, but not in the 4th installment, but the 5th one. According to the creators, technically, the differences are not significant. However, the fact is that all the tools that have been made for the earlier version so far will not work on the new version.

There is also no programming language converter from MQL4 to MQL5, so the only option is to fix the code yourself (if we have access to the source code and if we learn it first) or create the whole tool from scratch (and sometimes it can be easier ).

Additional tools in MetaTrader 5

News and calendar. Zakładka News with market news has been slightly modified. News opened in a separate window is more readable. The ability to filter the category has also been added (right-clicked option has been added Categories ->). The filtration options are not very much and do not look very well thought out (there is a category such as SNB and FED, but there is no ECB), but it's better than nothing.

We also had a calendar embedded in the platform, which was not at all on MT4 (traders had to deal with additional indicators). The calendar itself is a bit disappointing. It is transparent, but we do not have the option to filter countries from which we want to see macroeconomic data. This makes us see indicators from the US, Europe, but also from Chile, South Africa, Romania and Singapore. And we can not change it. In addition, our visibility is limited by the size of the Terminal window. Of course, we can stretch them, but eventually we will have to zoom them out shortly to be able to use the platform comfortably. A more convenient solution would be to draw the calendar to a large graph window.

Macroeconomic calendar on MT5

There is also a nice thing. We can enable the marking of events on the charts on the platform. Then on the timeline we can see in colors at what time the publication of a given indicator was. After hovering over the object, its name could be displayed additionally, but what - maybe I require too much? 🙂

Keyboard shortcuts. There are no changes in this field. Basic keyboard shortcuts to operate the platform are still valid. We also have the option of configuring your own (using Ctrl or Alt) to run indicators, EA or scripts.

Notifications. Going to this part, we get a little surprise. In MetaTrader 5 the name of the tab has been changed alarmsin which we had the option of setting price notifications. Now we have a bookmark Noteseven though we can not write any comments there, it still serves only to manage price alerts :-).

Transaction history. The tab with the history remained in place, but the changes affected it as well. Unfortunately, the manufacturer still has not foreseen the possibility of showing profit or loss expressed in pips in the transaction history. For this, for example, he added the option to change the way the volume is displayed from lots to amounts - redundant in the case of currencies, but for other instruments it can be useful.

We can filter transactions detailing the selected instrument, type of order (e.g. closed position, deposits / withdrawals, etc.) and save the report in HTML or XML format. The report itself looks a bit clearer. However, the version of the simplified report has been abolished - only the option listing all statistics from the account is available.

Strategy Tester. Fans of trading with machines (so-called EA - Expert Advisors) will be satisfied. The tool for checking the strategy on historical data has gained new functionalities. The "Execution" parameter has been added, in which we can define a constant or random delay for a more reliable simulation of concluding transactions.

There are also two new models based on which transactions will be concluded. 4 was available on MT3: Every tick, Point control, Only opening prices. On MT5 there are also: Each tick based on real ticks and Mathematical calculations.

The configuration settings have been pulled out of the Tester, giving up additional windows - thanks to this, we can make modifications faster. There was also a lever selection parameter, when it was previously taken from the account settings. And now one of the most positive changes. Thanks to the introduced multithreading, when using optimization, we can choose to run the test simultaneously on several instruments that are active in the Market Watch window. There is also the possibility of performing a test in a computing cloud, the so-called in the Cloud MQL5 network - just register in the MQ community.

There are also disadvantages. However, the option to choose the value of the spread taken for the test has disappeared. A pity - it was a useful option. The choice in the test has also been removed so that EA only opens long or short positions.

Strategy tester at MT5

MetaTrader 5 speed

MetaTrader 5 was supposed to work faster than MetaTrader 4. The so-called multithreading, i.e. the platform can do several things at the same time. In MT4, if we had 100 trades open, closing all of them at once, e.g. with a script, took a long time (i.e. in fact it did not happen "at once", but one by one). The aforementioned multithreading is also supposed to contribute to more efficient and faster execution of orders.

But will the average Kowalski feel the difference in speed of action on MetaTrader 5? I do not think so, but only because I have never had any reservations about the speed of MT4.

Summation

MetaTrader version 5 is not a revolution. It's just an evolution. Medium range, too. But it must be admitted that it was needed. The outdated environment in which MT4 lives effectively inhibited the possibility of further development of the platform. And the solution could only be a general renovation. At least from the "back office", so many changes are not visible to the naked eye. Die-hard MT4 fans will say it's good.

However, when using MetaTrader 5, we do not experience a breath of fresh air, nor will we meet innovative solutions. One would expect something more from a platform created for over 8 years by industry specialists. On the other hand, we have proven and reliable solutions here. Is it worth the risk, then, that they will be spoiled by "unnecessary" fountains?