MT4 Terminal Window - MetaTrader 4 Transactions Tabs Panel

The MetaTrader 4 Platform Software Terminal Window is mainly used for monitoring your account balance, account equity and trade reports mainly. There are other operations which can be set-up on this window but most of these are not commonly used.

On the online Forex platform MT4 the Terminal Window Panel is shown below:

Terminal Window - MetaTrader 4 Online Forex Software

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

Trade
Account History
News
Alerts
Mailbox
Signals
CodeBase
Experts
Journal

Let us look at each on its own:

Trade Tab

If you open a Forex on the MetaTrader 4 software, the trade transaction will then be recorded here on this Trade Tab. For Example if you sell The EURUSD, open a sell trade order the following details and particulars will be recorded on the Trade Tab panel window.

Trade Tab - Platform Trading Windows

From the above illustration we have opened a Sell EURUSD: trade details and particulars are illustrated above under the column details and particulars marked

Order, Time, Type, Size, Quote, Price, S/L,T/P, Commission, Swap, Profit

Order, - The trade number

Time, - The Time

Type, - The Type of order, Sell or Buy

Size, - Size of trade position, 1 Standard Lot

Symbol, - Currency Symbol, EURUSD

Open Price - 1.35185

S/L, - Stop Loss

T/P, - Take-Profit

Current Price

Commission, - Commission (no commission charged by this online broker)

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

Profit - $51 dollars

Most common operation after opening a trade is to place the StopLoss 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 software workspace after setting these two levels, stoploss will close your order with a minimum loss and take profit'll close your it at a practical profit.

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

This will pop-up as:

Modify a Order on the MetaTrader 4 Platform

The Menu has The following Options:

New Order - Put a new trade
Close - Can close this trade transaction at ruling price
Modify or Delete - Can Modify the S/L & T/P, (order can't be deleted, delete is for pending orders which are not yet executed)
Trailing Stop - Set a trailing Stop Loss
Profit - View profit as either pips, term currency or deposit currency: depending on which option you favor.
Commission, Taxes, Comments, are additional columns which you as a forex trader can choose and select to show or hide by ticking/unticking(Checking/Unchecking) them.
Auto Arrange - Arrange Currencies according to the alphabet, time of open, most lucrative according to sorting by choosing a column of arranging priority, for example "Time" column.
Grid - Show Grid or do not Show Grid, by Ticking or Unchecking/Unticking this option.

To Set Take Profit & Stop Loss, T/P and S/L we shall make use of the third option, "Modify or Delete", after pressing this the following panel will pop-up:

SL Order is set at 250 points - 25 pips

Take Profit is set at 500 points - 50 pips

You can set this two points by choosing 250 & 500 on part labeled points, red part marked copy is for Stop Loss and blue part tagged copy as is for Take-Profit as shown & displayed on the screen shot below.

After that click the wide red button marked modify to modify.

Modify a Order in MT4

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

Take Profit and Stop Loss Levels Shown on Meta Trader Platform

S/L and T/P Order Details Updated on the Meta 4 trader Platform Transaction Window

If you were to close out the above trade transaction now, then the trade positions will be updated as shown, to reflect that the transaction has been closed and the profit added to your trading account equity balance.

Account Balance Updated on the MetaTrader 4 Platform

Account History

This is used to generate trade reports of trade transactions that have been opened previously and have been closed. This is a record of all the prior trades.

Trade Reports Window in MT4

On the above illustration, there are currently no records on this trade 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 EURUSD forex pair.

EURUSD Closed Transaction Recorded on MT4 Account History Transaction Tab

From the above illustrations, once our open EURUSD order was closed the transaction was then recorded as an entry within "Account History" of the MetaTrader 4 Software/Platform

MT4 Account History Menu

Trading Account History Menu

This menu is illustrated above and can be accessed by rightclicking anywhere within the trading account history panel. Last Four (commissions, Taxes, comments, Auto Arrange and Grid are used more for formatting purposes on the software but not for trading purposes in general, therefore we shall not look on these as they're self explanatory)

The following 6 options are Shown Below:

All History, Last 3 Months, Last Month or Custom Period - all these options can be used to choose time period for which you as the trader want to generate history of the trading transactions.

Save as Report, Save as Detailed Report - This will generate a report of all transactions along with profit & loss calculation, drawdown calculation, profit factor calculation, the expected pay-off factor of the trading system you use along with the total No. of profitable trade positions, losing ones, the average loss per trade and the average profit per trade as shown below.

Generating Trade Reports of Your Account on MT4 Trader Platform

Save as Report

Save as a Detailed Report

Saving detailed Reports of Transactions History on Meta Trading 4 Software

News Tab

This is the third option within the MetaTrader 4 Terminal Panel this window is used to show a listing of current news provided as a news feed by your broker. This is displayed below:

Forex News Stream on MT4 Online Forex Software

Alerts Tab

This is used to set an alert for price when it gets to a pre-determined level. For examples you may be using a Bollinger bands, an indicator that forms an upper boundary & lower boundary and 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 50 pips below ruling market price, we shall open the Alerts Tab, & right click to activate the menu below:

How to Set Price Alerts in MT4

On above panel, select, Create & create one as follows:

Placing Price Alerts on MetaTrader 4 Software

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

Placing Price Alerts in MT4

The above alert is then set and an alert will sound off once this price of EURUSD 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 MetaTrader 4 and practice opening this option to see how you can put a new alert or delete the same or modify the alert.

Mailbox Tab

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

Mail Box on MT4

Trading Signals Tab

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

MT4 Signals Provided From MQL5 Website Direct to the Trading Software/Platform

To learn more about MetaTrader 4 MQL5 Signals, navigate to MQL5 Signals Page.

Code Base Tab

Code-Base contains a listing or a library of Expert Advisors that one can purchase from through their MetaTrader 4 platform software and then use this Expert Advisors which are automated programs used to trade currencies. These EA Robots are set up Expert Advisors on the FX traders MetaTrader 4 software. To use these Expert Advisors (EAs) a trader has to activate automated trade option within their platform a topic explained in the next tutorial. The Code-Base is displayed and shown Below:

MT4 Automated EAs Provided From MQL5 Website Direct to the Trade Platform

To learn more about MetaTrader 4 MQL5 Expert Advisors, navigate to MQL5 Expert Advisors Page.

Experts Tab

Shows a list of all Expert Advisors that have been installed on the MetaTrader 4 Platform/Software, for Example the image below displays two EA Bots are setup on this software. This option also shows the trading specifications of each Expert Advisor, these include parameters like Take-Profits, Lot Size, Trailing Stop Levels and all the other custom parameters of the Expert Advisor that has been installed on the Forex platform.

Automated Forex Expert Advisors Installed on MT4

Journal Tab

Tracks log in activities of MT4 & from which PC Desktop computer & IP address of the PC Desktop computer used to log on to the platform.

This is more on the technical stuff & traders do not use this one a lot and henceforth we shall not explain it here but you can look at this on your own free time, on your MT4 Software.

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