The Best MT4 Brokers To Make Profit With
There are lots of brokers who offer MT4, there are lots of websites that ‘compare brokers’ – as if choosing your broker is like choosing your car insurance. These comparison websites are owned by people who aren’t traders and are simply interested in your traffic to their website. The most significant point here is that with these websites you receive no benefit for using them to choose your broker.
We are different. We are full time professional traders and actually use the brokers we recommend. That means we are able to assess what a broker is like in the real world and not just upon simple statistics like spreads and fees. This real world experience is why we aren’t going to present you with 50 different brokers. We are interested in quality not quantity.
For example:
- What good is a 1 point spread if you get slipped two points on your entry?
- What about data errors? Does the broker’s pricing have errors you need to spend time resolving?
- How about executions when there’s high volatility? There are few things as frustrating than being in a profitable trade and it not closing when you try to.
- What is the pricing compared to the underlying market? Support and access to it?
You can’t measure these real world considerations in a nice neat and attractive comparison table.
Most importantly, we are able to offer our professional trading services for free as a ‘thank you’ to everyone who uses our site to choose a broker, including membership to our profitable live trade room we have run since 2013 and our Telegram signals channel.
Choosing a broker and not receiving education is like buying a car with no one to teach you how to drive it.
The brokers we recommend are ones that perform excellently and consistently in the real world. When you have the right broker, you can solely focus on your trading.
The MT4 brokers we recommend
Criteria of a reliable broker
The most important consideration is what regulator a broker is under, and licence they operate with. There are lots of brokers who are ‘offshore’ and unlicenced and there are lots of traders who actually trust their money with these brokers!
Crazy.
A broker needs to be properly regulated. That means being licensed by a regulator who can investigate complaints, hold a broker to the highest standards and make sure they are accountable. Proper regulation also means your money is protected by having it in separate bank accounts (often insured), so you don’t need to worry about waking up one day and finding your trading capital has disappeared. You’ll also know your broker has to give you the most accurate pricing and best executions.
Spreads
Spreads tend to be the ‘big one’ traders focus on. The lowest spreads = the best broker, right? No necessarily.
This has resulted in brokers doing a ‘spread war’, which one the face of it appears to be a good thing for us. However, as written above, spreads are one side of the coin. Executions are the other. It’s no good have exceptionally low spreads and getting slipped several points with a poor execution. Some brokers have artificially tight spreads and then introduce slippage on every trade.
You also need to consider your trading time frames. If you’re a scalping day trader looking for 20 point / pip moves, then the spread is going to be more impactful than if you’re a swing trader looking for a 300 point / pip move.
A tight spread needs to be balanced with a solid execution.
Deposits and withdrawals
You need a range of depositing options and easy, responsive withdrawals. We all want to spend our profits, don’t we?
One thing to remember is that in most circumstances you will only be able to withdraw via the same method you funded your account. This isn’t the broker being awkward or difficult, it is because they they have to adhere to anti-money laundering laws when properly licenced. If you see complaints online about withdrawals about a broker, chances are it is because they person complaining has tried to withdraw via a different method and their request has been denied.
Range of instruments
Some traders specialise in one or two instruments. We know of traders who trade one instrument like the DAX. We know others who trade multiple different instruments. The widest range tends to be people who trade stocks / equities who need a wide range of FTSE 100, SPX 500 stocks / equities to be provided. This is one of the downside of MT4, few brokers offer a large range stocks / equities.
ESMA leverage limitations
The ESMA regulation changes greatly reduced the amount of leverage traders in Europe were able to trade with. Our view is this went way too far and placed excessive restrictions upon traders.
The solution to this is to find a broker who offers a ‘global licence’. This usually takes for the form of being licensed with the Australian authority, the ASIC. The ASIC model their regulation around the FCA (UK regulator), so your money is safe and secure with them. That doesn’t mean your trades are sent to Australia are delayed, as your trades will be executed on the server nearest to you. The leverage the EU used to have with the same executions.
Clever, eh?
Metatrader 4
MetaQuotes Software (who own and created MetaTrader) have been around since the year 2000. MT4 has been supported, developed and has evolved over those years to make it the premium trading software hundreds of thousands of traders use on a daily basis. We are no different.
One major advantage of MT4 is it allows you to change from one MT4 broker to another MT4 broker because once you’ve learnt how to use the platform, you can simply change over and carry on trading.
MT4 platform for stocks
Most brokers do not transfer their stock / equity markets to Metatrader. We are not sure why, but it doesn’t matter as Markets.com offer one of the widest ranges of stocks / equities to be traded. This is in addition to everything else they trade.
Here are the brokers we trust and use on a daily basis. The reason we use these brokers is because we know they do and offer everything we need in order to provide us with the platform to trade profitably. When you know you have a solid broker, you can focus on your trading. Below this table is a guide which will explain how to use MT4.
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How to use MT4
We have a multi-part series on YouTube which will take you from the basics setting-up of MT4, to advanced use. Basically everything you need to know to get you into a position where you can set the platform up and take trades. Anything that isn’t necessary to do this is disregarded. Once you’ve learnt to use the platform, you can use it with any broker.
Part one deals with the basics, part two setting up charts, part three how to apply technical analysis and part 4, how to place orders and trades.
Part 1: Metatrader basics
Part one deals with the things that are going to get you up and running with MT4. Looking at the platform like this, it can seem quite intimidating and overwhelming.
If you’d prefer to watch the explanation for this section which will show an MT4 broker in use, then here’s the YouTube video (please give it a thumbs up if you like it!):
Part one deals with the things that are going to get you up and running with MT4. Looking at the platform like this, it can seem quite intimidating and overwhelming.
Firstly, you need to be logged into the platform to access its full features. You can use a demo account for this purpose if you do wish. Any of the brokers we recommend have demo accounts available. Once you have your login and password you will need to go to the top left-hand corner and select ‘File’, then scroll down to ‘Login to Trade Account’. Once you have done that you will be faced with this screen:
The way to approach understanding the software is to break it down into sections and focus on understanding each section.
Firstly, we have the drop down menus. We have looked at ‘File’, where we logged in. We don’t need to look at anything else within ‘File’ at the moment – we’ll revisit it later – but let’s have a look at ‘View’ in more detail. ‘View’ is where you can change your languages, and also where you can find the shortcuts for the windows you’ll be using on a regular basis. For example the ‘Market Watch’. If you ever close any of your windows or lose them, you can always open up ‘View’ and select them there. The keyboard shortcuts are also there should you wish to use them, such as Ctrl+M for ‘Market Watch’ (you can also call this your ‘Watch List’.
The ‘Insert’ drop down is where you’ll find everything you can place upon your charts. It starts off with ‘Indicators’. So any technical indicators you wish to apply to your charts (including customer ones you may load in – more on that later), will be contained within this section. Have a look at how many indicators there are! The other selections within this menu are all the annotations and drawings you may want to place on your charts. These include basic lines, Fibonacci retracements, shapes, allows and text.
So if there’s anything you want to add to you charts, this is the menu for you.
The ‘Charts’ drop down menu is, as the name suggests, where you can make adjustments to the charts. This includes selecting whether you want Candlesticks, Bar Charts and Line Charts. Who uses bar and line charts? No one. Use candlesticks. I also like to get rid of the grid as I find it makes the charts convoluted. Ctrl+G is the keyboard shortcut for this. You can adjust your time frame and also zoom in and zoom out. The keyboard shortcuts for zooming in and out are + to zoom in and – for zoom out, so learn them as you’ll be using them a lot.
Don’t worry about tools, it’s not a menu you’ll need to get up and running with the platform. The same goes for ‘Help’. That leaves us to look at ‘Windows’. The only thing worth noting here is that you can quickly tile your charts to make them neat and proportionate.
So that covers the drop down menus.
Immediately below the drop down menus are the shortcuts for the most important and most used selections from the drop down menus.
The final section of part one is the ‘Market Watch’ window. This window contains all the instruments we want to monitor / potentially trade. In order to get more instrument and find the ones you want to trade, you can either right click in the ‘Market Watch’ section and select ‘Symbols’ (shortcut Ctrl+U) and you’ll see every instrument your broker offers to trade. You then double click what you want to add and the instrument will be added.
Another thing to take from this menu is that if you right click you can select ‘New Chart’ to bring up the chart.
Part 1 summary
We have covered how you log into the platform, what is within the drop down menus, the shortcut menus and how to use the ‘Market Watch’ box. If you log on to your MT4 broker you will be able to put these things into practice.
Part 2: Metatrader charting
If you’d prefer to watch the explanation for this section which will show an MT4 broker in use, then here’s the YouTube video:
After this section, we want you to take blank setup like this:
And turn it into something like this:
We will do this through a combination of profiles, watchlists and charting. If you close every window and start with blank platform (as above). Select ‘Market Watch’. If it has any instruments in it by default then remove them by pressing delete on the keyboard whilst the instruments are selected. Then right click and select ‘Show All’. That will show you everything you can trade based on what markets the broker you are using makes. This is good for having a look down to make sure the things you want to trade are available. Once you have done that, right click once again and select ‘Hide All’. You will now have a blank ‘Market Watch’ list again. So let’s make the list you actually want.
Start by right clicking and selecting ‘Symbols’ (Ctrl+U) and begin looking for the markets you want to trade. It may take a little time to find them all depending on how they are categorised by the broker you have selected. You only have to do this once so it’s not too much of an inconvenience.
Once you have selected the instruments you trade / want to monitor then your ‘Market Watch’ it should look something like this:
Now we want to save this watchlist we’ve made. We do this by right clicking on the ‘Market Watch’ box once again and selecting ‘Sets’ and then ‘Save As’. Then save your watchlist and names it as whatever you want. You can save multiple sets and access them through right clicking and once again going into sets.
Remember if you add further instruments to a set, you will need to re-save it.
So let’s get some charts on the screen. The easiest way to do this is to right click on the instrument you want a chart for and select ‘Chart Window’. This will display all the charts in a messy way, overlapping one another. Not very helpful. We want to arrange our charts nearly as ‘non-overlapping charts’. We can do that through the ‘Window’ drop down menu and selecting ‘Tile Windows’, selecting the shortcut button to the right of the – magnifying glass symbol or pressing Alt+R.
I suggest changing them all to candlesticks (just to the left of the + magnifying glass symbol) and getting rid of the grid, which is done by right clicking on the charts and selecting Grid or Ctrl+G. This is how I have my charts displayed.
Repeat this for how every chart you want to display.
Two useful buttons within the shortcut menus are these two here:
The left one is the ‘Scroll the chart to the end on tick incoming’ and the one on the right a button to ‘Shift end of the chart from the right border’.
The first will basically take you to the latest price information for whichever chart you have selected (useful if you’ve gone back in time to look at previous price data), and the second will place a gap to the right-hand side of the chart.
The shortcut section just above the ‘Market Watch’ box contains the drawing tools to place various drawings on the charts. These include vertical and horizontal lines, Fibonacci retracement, a text box and a couple of the other commonly used chart drawings.
Now deleting these draws off the charts isn’t as straightforward as you may think. Simply holding over a line, for example, doesn’t mean you can press ‘Delete’ and make it disappear. You have to hold down the left click of your mouse and you will see two dots either side of the drawing which look like this:
That means the line is selected and can now be deleted. An alternative way of deleting things is to right click on the relevant chart and select ‘Objects List’ (Ctrl+B). If you have lots on the chart and it’s hard to delete individual drawings, this can be used to delete.
So what happens if you want different charting setups? For example four charts displaying GBP/USD on different timeframes, but also four charts consisting of different stocks you are interested in.
This is where we introduce ‘Profiles’. Profiles are under the ‘File’ drop down menu. So if you have a range of charts setup how you like, select ‘Save As’ and save your profile. Keep in mind these profiles save ‘dynamically’ so any adjustment you make to your charts is saved at the time you make the adjustments. If you want to make a new profile then you should save one under a new name, then make charting adjustments.
Part 2 summary
You’ve learnt how to create watchlists and save them as sets. You’ve learnt how to setup and save charts as profiles and add and remove drawings from your charts. Next you’re going to learn how to add technical analysis to your charts. If you log on to your MT4 broker you will be able to put these things into practice.
Part 3: Technical analysis
If you’d prefer to watch the explanation for this section, which will show an MT4 broker in use, then here’s the YouTube video:
We want to take you from having a chart like this:
To a chart like this:
The first thing we need to look at is the ‘Insert’ drop down menu. This is the menu which contains all the technical indicators we have available to us. The most common ones are at the top, then at the bottom are the indicator ‘categories’ – Trend, Oscillators, Volumes etc.
When you select an indicator, say the MACD, it will come up with the settings for that particular indicator. These can be adjusted according to the settings you want. You can also change things like the colour of the indicator.
Alternatively, you can use the shortcut with the + symbol which is to the right of the scroll shortcuts.
If you want to remove an indicator the easiest way is to right click on the relevant chart and select ‘Indicators List’ (Ctrl+I). The indicators on that chart can be edited or deleted.
Like watchlists (using sets) and charts (using profiles), we want to be able to be able to save our indicators. This is where we use ‘Templates’. The quickest way to access templates is to use the shortcut. This is the farthest to the right on your shortcut buttons. If you click that it will give you the option to save your indicators as a template. These templates can also be applied to other charts as well. The templates are not ‘dynamically saved’ so any adjustments to your setup will only save if you do so manually.
So what happens if you have a custom indicator you want to load in to the platform? Firstly you need to possess a customer indicator. That will take the form of a .MQL4 file.
You need to open the relevant folder using this route: Click the ‘File’ dropdown menu, select the ‘Open Data Folder’, then select the ‘MQL4’ folder, then select the ‘Indicators’ folder.
Once you’ve opened that folder you can see all the existing indicators that you have to use with your MT4. You will see they are all MQL4 files. What you do is drag and drop the customer indicator MQL4 file into the ‘Indicators’ folder.
You then need to restart Metatrader.
Once you have done that you will go to the indicator shortcut and then scroll down to the ‘Custom’ section at the bottom. There you will find any customer indicators.
Part 3 summary
You’ve now learnt how to insert indicators. How to adjust them and delete them as well as save them as a template, which can be applied to any chart you wish. You have also learnt how to load custom indicators in to the platform, too. If you log on to your MT4 broker you will be able to put these things into practice.
We recommend MT4talk.com as the place to go to to find expert advisors and learn all about back-testing trading strategies.
Part 4: Placing orders
If you’d prefer to watch the explanation for this section, which will show an MT4 broker in use, then here’s the YouTube video:
The first thing we want to do is enable ‘One Click Trading’. We do this by going to our ‘Tools’ dropdown menu and selection ‘Options’ (Ctrl+O). Once the options are opened you then need to select ‘Trade’. At the bottom you can then select ‘One Click Trading’. You have to accept a disclaimer to acknowledge you understand what you are selecting and then it’s enabled.
One click trading makes it easier to take trades, but just be careful you don’t ‘fat finger’ the charts and place yourself in an unplanned trade!
The quickest way to get in to a trade is to open up the ‘Trade Panel’. This is located at the top left of the chart as the small triangle. You can click this to make it appear or use the keyboard shortcut of Alt+T.
If you are using a demo account you can then set you trading size and press ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ and you’ll see you’ve instantly been put into an ‘at market’ trade, where you have been placed in the market at the price it is at the time you press the trade button. You’ll be able to see your trade by looking at the ‘Terminal’ section at the bottom of the platform’
The terminal contains information about our trade/s, including the number, the time and date it was triggered off as well at the type, size, price we are in the market as well as our stop and limit as well as the profit or loss of the trade.
In order to close our trade there are two basic ways. The first is the right click on the trade and select ‘Close Order’, the second way is to click the X just below the ‘profit’ section in the terminal.
If you take a trade using the ‘Trade Panel’ you won’t have stop loss or take profit levels set. The easiest way to add these is to right click on the trade and select ‘Modify Order’. The stop loss and take profit levels will be set as all zeros, which indicates there are no orders.
The ‘Level’ section allows you to put a point / pip value as to how far you want your stop and profit orders away from your entry. Once you have put those values in you can press ‘Copy as’ and it will automatically enter the stop and profit orders that number of points away from your entry.
Once these have been successfully entered the large long ‘Modify’ button below will become clickable (no longer greyed out) and you can press it.
Moving back to the chart where you have now entered your stop and profit order, you will see they are no on the charts. The green line represents your entry and the dotted red lines the stop and profit orders you added.
The charts are interactive. That means the stop and profit orders can be moved through holding them with left click and moving them up and down.
So that is how you place at market trades and subsequently add stop and profit orders. What about orders we want to place at other price levels from where the market currently is?
We can click the ‘New Order’ shortcut just below the ‘Window’ drop down menu. You can also press the F9 key.
You’ll see in ‘Type’ there are the two different types of orders. The first is ‘Market Execution’ and the second ‘Pending Order’. Market execution is the same as pressing the one click trading. So what you want to do is change it to pending order.
You can then enter the price you want to trade at as well as entering the stop and limit levels. There are also options to change the ‘Symbol’ (market you want to trade), the ‘Volume’ (size per point / pip) and add a comment. There is also an ‘Expiry’ option which is where you can set when you want the order to expire.
Once you have placed the order it will show on your charts. You can once again use the interactive charts to move the orders. What is different here is because you are not in the trade, you can drag and move the entry. If you select and drag the entry order it will move the stop and profit order relative to it, too.
If you want to delete your orders before they are triggered off, you can either right click on the order in the trade section of the terminal and select ‘Modify Order’, then select delete. You could also click the X next to the order you want to remove as a quicker way to do that.
Part 4 summary
Once you have placed the order it will show on your charts. You can once again use the interactive charts to move the orders. What is different here is because you are not in the trade, you can drag and move the entry. If you select and drag the entry order it will move the stop and profit order relative to it, too. If you log on to your MT4 broker you will be able to put these things into practice.
The MT4 broker we recommend
We use Markets.com as our MT4 broker to trade with as they offer their ‘MaketsX’ account which have some of the lowest spreads in the industry
Contact us on WhatsApp or Telgram with any questions you may have.
Great write-up! Well articulated.
Thanks Sam, only took 5000 hours to do 😛