MetaTrader 4 Terminal Window
The MetaTrader 4 Indices Trading Platform Terminal Window is mainly used for monitoring your indices trading account 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 commonly used.
On the online indices trading platform MT4 the Terminal Window is shown below:
Terminal Window - MT4 Online Indices Trading Platform
The Terminal Window has the Following Sub Menu or Tabs:
- Trade
- Indices Trading Account History
- News
- Alerts
- Mailbox
- Stock Indices 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 indices trade order the following details will be recorded on this Trade Tab panel.
Trade Tab - Indices Trading Platform Trading Windows
From the above example: The transaction details are shown above under the column details marked
Order, Time, Type, Size, Symbol, Indices Price, S/L,T/P, Commission, Swap, Profit
Order, - The transaction number
Time, - The Time
Type, - The Type of order, Sell or Buy
Size, - Size of transaction, 1 Standard Lot
Symbol, - MetaTrader 4 Symbol
Open Indices Price - 1.35185
S/L, - Stop Loss Indices Order
T/P, - Take Profit Indices Order
Current Indices Price
Commission, - Commission (no commission charged by this broker)
Swap, - no swap charged as per now, the trade has not stayed overnight
Profit - $ 51 dollars
The most common operation after opening a transaction is to place the Stop Loss Indices Order and Take Profit Indices Order, These are abbreviated as S/L and 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, the stop loss will close your order with a minimum loss and the 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, the part shaded grey, the following menu will appear, this is used to make changes to the current order that is open.
This will appear as:
Modify a Stock Indices 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 indices price
- Modify or Delete - Can Modify the S/L and T/P, (order cannot be deleted, delete is for pending stock indices orders that are not yet executed)
- Trailing Stop - Set a trailing Stop Loss Indices Order
- Profit - View profit as either pips or in dollars; depending on which option you favor.
- Commission, Taxes, Comments, are additional columns that you can chose to show or hide by ticking/unticking(Checking/Unchecking) them.
- Auto Arrange - Arrange indices charts according to alphabet, time of open, most profitable according to sorting by choosing a column of arranging priority, for example "Time" column.
- Grid - Show Grid or do Not Show Grid, by Checking/Unchecking this option.
To Set Take Profit Indices Order and Stop Loss Indices Order, T/P and S/L we use the third option, "Modify or Delete", after clicking this the following panel will popup:
S/L is placed at 250 points - 25 pips
T/P is placed at 500 points - 50 pips
You can set this two points by selecting 250 and 500 on the part labeled points, the red part marked copy is for Stop Loss Indices Order and blue part marked copy as is for Take Profit Indices Order as shown on the screenshot below.
After that press the wide red button marked modify to modify.
Modify a Trading Order on MT4
The order will then appear as below, note that the S/L and T/P columns for our trade have now been updated as shown below.
Take Profit Indices Order and Stop Loss Indices Order Levels Shown on Meta Trader Platform
S/L and T/P Trading Order Details Updated on the 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 and the profit added to your account balance.
Indices Trading Account Balance Updated on the MetaTrader 4 Platform
Indices Trading Account History
This is used to generate trade reports of trades that have been opened previously and have been closed. This is a record of all previous transactions.
Trade Reports Window on MT4
On the above example, 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 MetaTrader 4 Indices Trading Account History Transaction Tab
From the above example, once our open order was closed the trade transaction was then recorded as an entry within the "Account History" of the MetaTrader 4 Indices Trading Software
MetaTrader 4 Indices Trading Account History Menu
Indices Trading Account History Menu
This menu is shown above and can be accessed by right clicking anywhere within the account history panel. The last Four (commissions, Taxes, comments, Auto Arrange and 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)
The following 6 options are Shown Below:
All History, Last 3 Months, Last Month or Custom Period - all these options can be used to select the time period for which you want to generate the 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, expected payoff factor of the system you use along with the total number of profitable transactions, losing ones, the average loss per transaction and the average profit per transaction as shown below.
Generating Trade Reports of Your Indices Trading Account on MetaTrader 4 Trader Platform
Save as Report
Save as Detailed Report
Saving detailed Reports of Trading Transactions History on Meta Trading 4 Platform
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 MetaTrader 4
Alerts Tab
This is used to set an alert for stock indices price when it reaches a pre determined level. For example you may be using a Bollinger bands, an indicator that forms an upper boundary and lower boundary and you want to set an alert for stock indices price when it gets to any one of these zones.
For example, in our above example we may want to put an alert for at 50 pips below the current indices price, we shall open the Alerts Tab, and right click to activate the menu below:
How to Set Indices Price Alerts on MetaTrader 4
On the above panel, select, Create and create one as follows:
Setting Indices Price Alerts on MT4 Indices Software
Put the sound as the alert action, set stock indices symbol, set the condition to set is when bid stock indices price is less than(Bid<) and put the value for example at 1.34730, select the source of the alert sound as above, (This is a sound file with extension Alert.wav), adjust timeout to 10 seconds and iterations at maximum of 50, then select OK to activate it.
Setting Indices Price Alerts on MetaTrader 4
The above alert is then set and an alert will sound off once this stock indices 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 and 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 that have been sent to you, to your Online indices trading platform as shown 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 Platform, this is shown below, one can select any signal provider and click subscribe to get the stock indices signals.
MT4 Signals Provided From MQL5 Indices Website Directly to the Trading Platform
To learn and 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 Robots are set up Expert Advisors on the indices 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:
MT4 Indices Expert Advisors Provided From MQL5 Indices Website Directly to the Trading Platform
To learn and 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 Trading Robots are installed on this indices trading platform. This option also shows the trading specifications of each EA, these include trading parameters such as Take Profit Indices Orders, Lot Size, Trailing Stop Levels and all the other custom trading parameters of the EA that has been installed on the indices trading platform.
Automated Indices Expert Advisors Installed on MT4
Journal Tab
Tracks login activities of the Meta 4 trader and from which computer and the IP address of the computer used to login to the platform.
This is more on the technical stuff and traders do not use this one a lot and therefore we shall not explain it here but you can look at this at your own free time, on your MetaTrader 4 Stock Indices Trading Software.
