MT4 Terminal Window - Forex MT4 Transactions Tabs Panel

The MetaTrader 4 Platform Terminal Window is mainly used for monitoring your forex 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 Forex platform MT4 the Terminal Window Panel is illustrated below:

Terminal Window - MT4 Online Software

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

1. Trade
2. Forex Trading Account History
3. News
4. Alerts
5. Mailbox
6. Trading Signals
7. Code Base
8. Experts
9. Journal

Let us look at each on its own:

Trade Tab

If you open a Forex on the MT4 platform, the transaction will then be recorded here on this Trade Tab. For Example if you sell The EUR USD, open a sell trade order the following details will be recorded on this Trade Tab panel.

Trade Tab - Forex Platform Trading Windows

From above example we have opened a Sell EUR USD: trade details are shown above under the column details marked

Order, Time, Type, Size, Quote, 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, - Currency Symbol, EUR USD

Open Price - 1.35185

S/L, - Stop Loss

T/P, - Take Profit

Current Price

Commission, - Commission (no commission charged by this forex trading expert broker)

Swap, - no swap charged as per now, the trade has not stayed overnight

Profit - $ 51 dollars

The most common operation after opening a trade is to place the Stop-Loss and Take Profit, 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 & the take profit will close-out your trade at a reasonable profit.

To place this S/L and T/P, we shall Right Click anywhere within this Trade Tab, part shaded grey, following menu will pop up and appear, this is used to make changes to the current order that has been opened.

This will popup as:

Modify a Forex Order on the MT4 Software

The Menu has The following Options:

1. New Order - Put a new transaction
2. Close - Can close this transaction at current price
3. Modify or Delete - Can Modify the S/L and T/P, (order can't be deleted, delete is for pending orders that are not yet executed)
4. Trailing Stop - Set a trailing Stop Loss
5. Profit - View profit as either pips, term currency or deposit currency: depending on which option you favor.
6. Commission, Taxes, Comments, are additional columns that you can chose to show or hide by ticking/unticking(Checking/Unchecking) them.
7. Auto Arrange - Arrange Currencies according to alphabet, time of open, most profitable according to sorting by choosing a column of arranging priority, for example 'Time' column.
8. Grid - Show Grid or don't Show Grid, by Checking or Unchecking this option.

To Set Take Profit and Stop Loss, T/P and S/L we use the third option, 'Modify or Delete', after clicking this the following panel will popup:

SL is set at 250 points - 25 pips

TP is set 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 and blue part marked copy as is for Take Profit as shown on the screenshot below.

After that press the wide red button key marked modify to modify.

Modify a Order on MetaTrader 4 Software

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

Take Profit and Stop Loss Levels Shown on Meta Trader Platform

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 follows, to reflect that the transaction has been closed & the profit added to your trading account balance.

Forex Account Balance Updated on the MT4 Software

Forex 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 Window on MetaTrader 4 Software

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. Let us see what happens when we close our open position of EUR USD currency pair.

EUR USD Closed Transaction Recorded on MetaTrader 4 Account History Transaction Tab

From above example, once our open EUR USD trading order was closed the transaction was then recorded as an entry within 'Account History' of the MT4 Platform

MetaTrader 4 Account History Menu

FX 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 on these as they are self-explaining)

The following 6 options are Shown Below:

All History, Last Three Months, Last Month or Custom Period - all these options can be used to choose time period for which you want 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 Forex Account in MT4 Trader Platform

Save as Report

Save as Detailed Report

Saving detailed Reports of Transactions History on Meta Trading 4 FX 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 Forex broker. This is shown below:

Forex News Stream in MT4 Online Software

Alerts Tab

This is used to set an alert for price when it reaches a pre determined level. For examples you might be using a Bollinger bands, an indicator that forms an upper boundary and lower boundary & you want to set an alert for price when it gets to any one of these levels.

For example, in our above example we might 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 in MT4

On the above panel, choose, Create & create one as follows:

Setting Price Alerts on MetaTrader 4 Software

Put the sound as the alert action, currency symbol is the EUR USD, set the condition to set is when bid price is less than(Bid<-<) and put the value for examples at 1.34730, choose the source of the alert sound as above, (This is a sound file with extension Alert.wav), adjust the timeout to 10 seconds and iterations at maximum of 50, then choose OK to activate it.

Setting Price Alerts in MT4

The above alert is then set and an alert will sound off once this price of EUR USD 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

Mailbox is used to view the messages that have been sent to you, to your Online Forex platform as shown below:

Mail Box in MT4

Forex Trading Signals Tab

Contains of a list of Forex Signal Providers that traders can subscribe to through their MT4 Platform, this is shown below, one can select any signal provider and click subscribe to get the Forex signals.

MT4 Signals Provided From MQL5 Forex Website Directly To The Software

To learn more about MT4 MQL5 Signals, navigate to the MQL5 Forex Signals Page.

CodeBase Tab

CodeBase contains a list or a library of Expert Advisors that one can purchase from through their MT4 platform and then use this EAs which are automated programs used to trade currencies. These Expert Advisor Forex Robots are set up EAs on the traders MT4 platform. To use these EAs (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 EAs Provided From MQL5 Forex Website Directly To The Software

To learn more about MT4 MQL5 Expert-Advisors, navigate to the MQL5 Forex EAs Page.

Experts Tab

Shows a list of all EAs that have been installed on the MT4 Platform, For Example the image below shows two Expert Advisor Forex Robots are installed on this platform. This option also shows the trading specifications of each EA, these include trading parameters such as Take Profits, Lot Size, Trailing Stop Levels and all the other custom trading parameters of the Expert Advisor that has been installed on the Forex platform.

Automated Forex EAs Installed in MT4

Journal Tab

Tracks login activities of the MT4 and from which computer PC and the IP address of the computer PC used to login to the trading platform.

This is more on the technical stuff & 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 Platform.