MetaTrader 4 Terminal Window

The MetaTrader 4 Platform Terminal Window is used mainly for monitoring your trading balance, account equity and trade reports mainly. There are other operations which can be set-up on this window but most of these aren't often used.

On the online trading platform MT4 the Terminal Window Panel is illustrated below:

Terminal Window - MT4 Online Trading Software

The Terminal Panel Window has the Following Sub-Menu or Tabs:

Trade
Index Account History
News
Alerts
Mailbox
Trade 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 indices trading order the following info shall be recorded on this Trade Tab panel window.

Trade Tab - Trading Software Windows

From the above example: trade details and particulars are illustrated above under the column details marked

Order, Time, Type, Size, Quote, 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 Price - 1.35185

S/L, - Stop Loss

T/P, - TakeProfit Order

Current 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 and TP Order, These are abbreviated as S/L and T/P. There is likely no other operation to set-up after this only to monitor the trade transactions within the trading platform workspace after setting these 2 levels, stop loss will close your order with a minimum loss and take profit'll close your it at a reasonable profit.

To place this S/L & T/P, we shall RightClick 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 trading order that has been opened.

This will pop up as:

Modify a Order on the MT4 Platform Software

Menu has The following Options:

New Order - Put a new trade
Close - Can close out this transaction at ruling price
Modify or Delete - Can Modify the S/L and T/P, (order can't be deleted, delete is for pending orders that aren't yet executed)
Trailing Stop - Set a trailing Stop Loss
Profit - View profit as either pips or as dollars: depending on the option you favor.
Commission, Taxes, Comments, are additional columns which you as a stock index trader can select to show or hide by ticking/unticking) them.
Auto Arrange - Arrange charts according to alphabet, time of open, most lucrative according to sorting by choosing a column of arranging priority, for examples "Time" column.
Grid - Show Grid or do not Show Grid, by Checking or Unchecking this option.

To Set TP Order & Stop-Loss Order, T/P & S/L we will make use of the third option, "Modify or Delete", after pressing this the following panel will popup:

Stop Loss is placed at 250 points - 25 pips

TP is placed at 500 points - 50 pips

You can set this two points by selecting 250 and 500 on the part labeled points, red part marked copy is for Stop Loss Order and blue part tagged copy as is for Take-Profit Order as shown on the screenshot below.

After that click the wide red button marked and tagged modify to modify.

Modify a Order in MT4

Order will then appear and be shown as below, note that the S/L and T/P columns for our trade have been updated now as illustrated and displayed below.

Take Profit Order and Stop-Loss Order Zones Shown on Meta Trader Software

S/L and T/P 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 shown, to reflect that the transaction has been closed and the profit added to your equity balance.

Index Account Balance Updated on MetaTrader 4 Software

Index 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 the previous transactions.

Trade Reports Panel on MT4

On illustrations laid-out above, there are currently no trade records on this trade history recorded. There needs to be a couple of closed trade position transactions for this record to show some entries.

MetaTrader 4 Indices Transaction Recorded on MT4 Account History Transaction Tab

From the exemplifications put on display above, once our open order was closed the trade was then recorded as an entry within "Account History" of the MT4 Software

MetaTrader 4 Trading Account History Menu

Index Account History Menu

This menu is displayed above & can be accessed by right clicking anywhere within the trading account history panel. Last Four (commissions, Taxes, comments, Auto Arrange & Grid are used more for output formatting purposes on the trading platform software but not for trading purposes in general, thenceforth we shall not look at these as they are self explaining)

following six options are Shown Below:

All History, Last 3 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 & loss calculation, draw-down calculation, profit factor calculation, the expected pay-off factor of the trading system that you use along with the total number of profitable trade positions, losing ones, the average loss per trade & the average profit per trade as illustrated below.

Generating Trade Reports of Your Account in MT4 Trader Software

Save as Report

Save as Detailed Report

Saving detailed Reports of Trading Transactions History on Meta 4 Stock Software

News Tab

This is the third option within the MT4 Terminal Panel this window is used to display a list of current news reports provided as a news feed by your indices online broker. This is pictured below:

Stock News Stream in MT4

Alerts Tab

This is used to set an alert for the price when it gets to a pre-determined level. For examples you might be using a Bollingers, 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 may want to put an alert for at 50 pips below the current price, we shall open Alerts Tab, and right-click to activate the menu below:

How to Set Price Alerts on MT4

On above panel, choose, Create and create one as follows:

Putting Price Alerts in MT4 Software Platform

Put sound as the alert action, set stock symbol, set condition to set is when bid stock price is less than(Bid<-<) & put the value for example at 1.34730, choose 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 select OK to activate it.

Putting Price Alerts on MT4

The above alert is then set and an alert will sound off once the price drops below this technical level.

By right click on this, Alert Menu provides options for adjusting it, deleting it or turning it off. You can download the MT4 and practice opening this option to see how you as a stock indices trader can put a new alert or delete the alert or modify it.

Mailbox Tab

Mail-box is used to view the messages which have been sent to you, to your Online software as shown below:

Mail Box in MT4

Stock Trade Signals Tab

Contains of a listing of Index Signal Providers that traders can subscribe to through their MetaTrader 4 Platform, this is illustrated and shown below, one can choose any trading signal provider & click subscribe to get the trade signals.

MetaTrader 4 Signals Provided From MQL5.com Website Direct to the Platform

To learn and know more about MT4 MQL5 Signals, navigate to MQL5.com Trade Signals Page.

CodeBase Tab

Code-Base contains a listing or a library of Expert Advisors that one can purchase from through their MT4 software and then use this Expert Advisors which are automated programs used to trade indices. These EA Bots are set up Expert Advisors on the traders MT4 software. To use these Expert Advisors (Expert Advisors) one has to activate automated trade option within their platform a topic explained in the next guide. The Code-Base is pictured Below:

MetaTrader 4 Expert Advisors Provided From MQL5 Website Direct to the Platform

To learn and know more about MT4 MQL5 Expert Advisors, navigate to MQL5 Stock Expert Advisors Page.

Experts Tab

Shows a list of all Expert Advisors that have been installed on the MetaTrader 4 Platform, for Example the image below highlights two EA Bots are set up on this trading platform. This option also illustrates the trading specifications of each EA, these include trade settings such as and like TP Orders, Lot Size, Trailing Stop Levels & all the other custom parameters of the Expert Advisor that has been installed on the trading software.

Automated Expert Advisors Installed on MT4

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.

This is more on the technical stuff & traders do not use this one a lot and thence we shall not explain it here but you as a Stock Index trader can look at this on your own free time, on your MT4 Stock Software.

Learn More Tutorials & Courses:

Trade Stock Indices