MT4 tips and tricks

Customising charts

You can fully customise your charts with indicators, grids and period separators and can add and remove these as you see fit. Here are some useful keyboard shortcuts for easy removals: 

Hiding the bid line
If you use a lot of technical analysis, the bid line can become rather obtrusive. To remove the bid line you can set the colour of the line to ‘None’, completely removing it from the chart.

 

 

Setting the default chart
Once you have a chart you’re happy with, you can save it as a template. The quickest and easiest way to do this is by right-clicking on the chart and selecting “Template”, followed by “Save Template”. You can have as many templates as you like to match all of your trading strategies.
If you have a preferred template that you wish to save as your default, you can do this by right-clicking on the chart, selecting “Template”, “Save As” and then “Default”.

Customising toolbars

Many of the toolbar functionalities can be distracting and you may find you don’t use all of them. With MT4 you can add in or hide as many features as you want.
There are four separate toolbars available:
 

• Standard

• Chart studies

• Line studies

• Time frames

You can move toolbars around by simply dragging them to wherever you’d like them to be.

To customise what you view, you can simply right-click on the toolbar and click on the customise sub-menu. Here you can remove functions that aren’t required by un-ticking them.

By using the customise feature on each toolbar, you can access hidden tools, while removing any you don’t require.  Through this technique, you can end up with a much cleaner and more compact user interface.

 

 
 

Using shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are a quick and easy way to perform tasks. By using shortcuts, you can have faster access to tools – saving plenty of time in the long run. You can remove redundant information and functionalities, and most importantly increase your charting space.
The following keyboard shortcuts can help to navigate your way around the platform easier:
 

Terminal	Control+T	This is the main window you use while trading – manage open orders, view account history and set alerts
Navigator	Control+N	Add Indicators, Expert Advisors and log in
Market Watch	Control+M	View available instruments
Data Window	Control+D	View all data for the product currently in the chart window

You can use the following shortcuts when analysing and trading, which can greatly improve the process speed of your trading:
 

+	Zoom in
-	Zoom out
Control+F	Crosshair
Control+Drag	Copy objects
Alt+Drag	Extend objects
Alt+T	One-click trading
Hotkeys	User-defined shortcuts

 
These are the shortcuts for the more visual aspects of your charts:

F8	Edit chart graphics
F9	Order panel
F11	Full screen chart
Alt+1	Bar charts
Alt+2	Candlestick charts
Alt+3	Line charts

 



Using hotkeys

In MT4, when you switch your chart templates, you’ll lose any current analysis on your charts. To prevent this, you can leave your price charts open and just change the indicators that you use – this is where hotkeys come into play. You can assign a hotkey to place a certain indicator on your charts, instead of needing to change the template.

To assign a hotkey to an indicator, simply right-click on the indicator on the navigator window and select “Hotkey”.





Favourites indicators list
To streamline the number of indicators that are available to you, you can create a favourites list. Here’s how you can add indicators to your favourites list:

 

1. Open Navigator (Control+N)

2. Open relevant tab (Indicators, Scripts etc)

3. Hover mouse over desired favourite

4. Right-click on your mouse

5. Select ‘Add to favourites’

Alerts

Alerts allow you to keep track of important price levels being breached, and can further enhance your analysis and chart organisation. If you track multiple markets, it can become easy to lose track of the markets, especially after an important event and all the markets move their separate ways.
To set up alerts, move your mouse to the area on the chart you’d like to set the alert at, right-click on the position, select ‘Trading’ and then ‘Alert’.