MetaTrader 4 Terminal Window
The MT4 Platform Terminal Window is mainly used for monitoring your indices trading balance, account equity and transaction reports mainly. There are other operations that can be set up on this panel but most of these are not oftenly used.
On the online indices platform MT4 the Terminal Window Panel is shown below:
Terminal Window - MT4 Online Indices Software
The Terminal Window has the Following Sub-Menu or Tabs:
- Trade
- Indices Trading Account History
- News
- Alerts
- Mailbox
- Trading Signals
- Code Base
- Experts
- Journal
Let us look at each on its own:
Trade Tab
If you open a Indices on the MetaTrader 4 platform, the transaction will then be recorded here on this Trade Tab. For Example if you sell The Indices, open a sell trade order the following details will be recorded on this Trade Tab panel.
Trade Tab - Indices Trading Platform Trading Windows
From the above example: trade details are illustrated above under the column details marked
Order, Time, Type, Size, Quote, Indices Price, S/L,T/P, Commission, Swap, Profit
Order, - The trade number
Time, - The Time
Type, - The Type of order, Sell or Buy
Size, - Size of trade, 1 Standard Lot
Quote, - MT4 Symbol
Open Indices Price - 1.35185
S/L, - Stop Loss Order
T/P, - TakeProfit Order
Current Indices Price
Commission, - Commission (no commission charged by this broker)
Swap, - no swap charged as per now, trade hasn't stayed overnight
Profit - $51 dollars
Most common operation after opening a trade is to place the Stop-Loss Order & Take Profit Order, These are abbreviated as S/L & T/P. There is likely no other operation to setup after this only to monitor the trades within the trading platform work-space after setting these two levels, stop-loss will close your order with a minimum loss and take profit will close your it at a reasonable profit.
To place this S/L and T/P, we shall Right Click anywhere within this Trade Tab, part shaded grey, the following menu will pop up and appear, this is the menu used to make changes to the current order that has been opened.
This will popup as:
Modify a Order on the MetaTrader 4 Platform
The Menu has The following Options:
- New Order - Put a new transaction
- Close - Can close this transaction at current price
- Modify or Delete - Can Modify the S/L & T/P, (order can't be deleted, delete is for pending stock indices orders that are not yet executed)
- Trailing Stop - Set a trailing Stop Loss Order
- Profit - View profit as either pips or in dollars: depending on which option you favor.
- Commission, Taxes, Comments, are additional columns that you as a trader can chose to show or hide by ticking/unticking(Checking/Unchecking) them.
- Auto Arrange - Arrange charts according to alphabet, time of open, most profitable according to sorting by selecting a column of arranging priority, for examples "Time" column.
- Grid - Show Grid or don't Show Grid, by Checking or Unchecking this option.
To Set Take Profit Order & Stop Loss Order, T/P & S/L we use the third option, "Modify or Delete", after clicking this the following panel will popup:
SL Order is placed at 250 points - 25 pips
TP Order is placed at 500 points - 50 pips
You can set this two points by selecting 250 & 500 on the part labeled points, red part marked copy is for Stop Loss Order & blue part marked copy as is for Take Profit Order as shown on the screenshot below.
After that press the wide red button marked modify to modify.
Modify a Order on MetaTrader 4
Order will then appear as below, note that the S/L and T/P columns for our trade have been updated now as illustrated & shown below.
Take Profit Order & Stop Loss Order Zones Shown on Meta Trader Platform
S/L and T/P Trading Order Details Updated on Meta 4 trader Platform Transaction Window
If you were to close the above transaction now, then the transactions will be updated as follows, to reflect that the transaction has been closed & the profit added to your trading account balance.
Indices Account Balance Updated on MT4 Platform
Indices Trading Account History
This is used to generate trade reports of trades that have been opened previously & have been closed. This is a record of all previous transactions.
Trade Reports Panel on MetaTrader 4
On the above examples, there are currently no trade records on this transaction history recorded. There needs to be a couple of closed transactions for this record to show some entries.
MetaTrader 4 Indices Transaction Recorded on MT4 Indices Trading Account History Transaction Tab
From the above examples, once our open order was closed the trade transaction was then recorded as an entry within the "Account History" of the MT4 Indices Trading Software
MetaTrader 4 Indices Account History Menu
Indices Trading Account History Menu
This menu is displayed above and can be accessed by right-clicking anywhere within the account history panel. Last Four (commissions, Taxes, comments, Auto Arrange & Grid are used more for formatting purposes but not for trading in general, therefore we shall not look at these as they are self explaining)
following 6 options are Shown Below:
All History, Last Three Months, Last Month or a Custom Period - all these options can be used to choose time period for which you as the trader wants to generate history of transactions.
Save as Report, Save as Detailed Report - This will generate a report of all transactions along with profit and loss calculation, draw-down calculation, profit factor calculation, the expected pay-off factor of the system you use along with the total number of profitable trade transactions, losing ones, the average loss per trade & the average profit per trade as shown below.
Generating Trade Reports of Your Indices Trading Account in MT4 Trader Platform
Save as Report
Save as Detailed Report
Saving detailed Reports of Trading Transactions History on Meta Trading 4 Stock Indices Software
News Tab
This is the third option within the MT4 Terminal Window this panel is used to display a list of current news provided as a news feed by your indices broker. This is shown below:
Stock Indices News Stream on MT4
Alerts Tab
This is used to set an alert for price when it reaches a pre determined level. For examples you may be using a Bollinger bands, an indicator that forms an upper boundary & lower boundary and you want to set an alert for price when it gets to any one of these zones.
For examples, in our above example we might want to put an alert for at 50 pips below the current price, we shall open the Alerts Tab, and right click to activate the menu below:
How to Set Indices Price Alerts in MetaTrader 4
On above panel, choose, Create & create one as follows:
Setting Indices Price Alerts in MetaTrader 4 Software
Put the sound as the alert action, set stock indices symbol, set the condition to set is when bid price is less than(Bid<-<) & put the value for example at 1.34730, select the source of alert sound as above, (This is a sound file with extension Alert.wav), adjust the timeout to Ten seconds and iterations at maximum of 50, then choose OK to activate it.
Setting Indices Price Alerts in MetaTrader 4
The above alert is then set and an alert will sound off once this price goes below this level.
By right clicking on this, the Alert Menu will provide options for modifying it, deleting it or turning it off. You can download the MT4 & practice opening this option to see how you can put a new alert or delete the same or modify it.
Mailbox Tab
Mail-box is used to view the messages which have been sent to you, to your Online indices software as illustrated below:
Mail Box on MT4
Stock Indices Trading Signals Tab
Contains of a list of Indices Trading Signal Providers that traders can subscribe to through their MT4 Indices Trading Software, this is illustrated & shown below, one can choose any signal provider & click subscribe to get the stock indices signals.
MetaTrader 4 Signals Provided From MQL5 Indices Website Direct to the Software
To learn & know more about MT4 MQL5 Signals, navigate to the MQL5 Indices Trading Signals Page.
CodeBase Tab
CodeBase contains a list or a library of Expert Advisors that one can purchase from through their MetaTrader 4 platform and then use this Expert Advisors which are automated programs used to trade indices. These EA Indices Trading Bots are set up Expert Advisors on the traders MetaTrader 4 platform. To use these Expert Advisors (EAs) one has to activate automated trading option within their platform a topic explained in the next tutorial. The Code Base is shown Below:
MetaTrader 4 Indices Expert Advisors Provided From MQL5 Indices Website Direct to the Software
To learn & know more about MT4 MQL5 Indices Trading Expert-Advisors, navigate to the MQL5 Stock Indices Expert Advisors Page.
Experts Tab
Shows a list of all Expert Advisors that have been installed on the MT4 Platform, for Example the image below shows two EA Indices Robots are installed on this indices platform. This option also shows the trading specifications of each Expert Advisor, these include trading parameters such as Take Profit Orders, Lot Size, Trailing Stop Levels & all the other custom trading parameters of the Expert Advisor that has been installed on the indices platform.
Automated Indices Expert Advisors Installed in MetaTrader 4
Journal Tab
Tracks login activities of the MT4 and from which computer and IP address of the PC computer used to log in to the trading software platform.
This is more on the technical stuff and traders don't use this one a lot & therefore we shall not explain it here but you can look at this at your own free time, on your MT4 Stock Indices Trading Software.
