Less-Known Features of MetaTrader Platform

Enivid

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Nov 30, 2008
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Odesa
www.earnforex.com
When talking about MetaTrader’s (4 or 5) most used features, the first ones that spring to mind are: charts, expert advisors, indicators, backtesting, optimization, trading orders, trailing stop, etc. At the same time, there are features that can be very useful but are often overlooked by traders. Not because they are hidden but rather because they are less advertised by other traders and MetaQuotes itself.

I will try to list and describe the most important of such features:
  • Alerts — apart from the alerts issued by indicators, it is possible to set your own alerts in MetaTrader. You can choose price or time as the trigger value and also choose an alert type — notification, sound, email or file. I have already written about Alerts before.
  • Chart templates and profiles — it is possible to save all your chart settings, added objects, and attached indicators into a chart template and apply it to other charts with two clicks. It is also possible to save all the currently open charts along with their custom settings into a profile and switch between them with two clicks too. I have already written about chart profiles before.
  • FTP uploading — scripts and expert advisors can be used to upload files to an FTP server given by the platform’s user (via Tools->Options->FTP). It can be handy if you want to upload some charts to your website or if you have some external software that needs to parse data from MetaTrader.
  • Emailing — scripts, indicator, expert advisors and built-in alerts can send emails with alerts, chart data or any other useful info.
  • Push notifications — offer functionality similar to email notifications but via push notifications sent by MetaQuotes website to your iPhone or Android device.
  • Indicator backtesting — MT5 can backtest indicators, which can be useful both to traders and developers. Just open a Strategy Tester and switch the first dropdown field from Expert to Indicator. You will see the indicator in action during a given period and at a given playback speed. The video below demonstrates a backtest of Keltner Channel indicator:

  • F12 (one-bar scrolling) — some traders prefer manual backtesting. That is where F12 key will come handy. It will scroll the MetaTrader chart by one bar. Using this method you can easily develop and test trading strategies without hindsight bias.