How To Place And Manage Your Orders With Your MT4 Platform I. How To Place A Simple Buy/Sell Order To place an Order (Sell or Buy), you have to open the Order window (Pic. 1). Pic. 1 - Order window There are several ways how to open the Order window: You can press F9 hot key. You can right-click the chart of the currency you want to Buy/Sell, and then choose New Order from the contextual menu. You can right-click the Market Watch window on the currency you want to Buy/Sell, and then choose New Order from the context menu (Pic. 2). You can double-click the currency.
Pic. 2 Order After you pressed New Order, you ll see the Order Window (Pic. 3): Pic.3 Order window
There are some options that the New Order window allows you to set up: Symbol: This provides a drop down list of all the currencies pair that you can use to open the New Order. Volume: This provides a drop down list of predefined Lot sizes that you can choose from for the New Order. Note: Volume refers to the Lots value. Stop Loss: This is a box with up and down arrows that enables you to set the Stop Loss level for the New Order. Use the up and down arrows or write the value of the Stop Loss in the text box. Setting the Stop Loss level is optional. Take Profit: This is a box with up and down arrows that enables you to set the Take Profit level for the New Order. Use the up and down arrows or write the value of the Take Profit in the text box. Setting the Take Profit level is optional. Comment field: Enter the comment text you want to assign to the New Order. Entering text in the Comment field is optional for the New Order. Type list: You can choose from one of these two options: Instant Execution Pending Order You have to choose Instant Execution because you want to make a Buy/Sell instantly. Sell button: Click this button if you want to open a Sell Order. Clicking the Sell button will close the New Order window and send the instructions to the broker. Buy button: Click this button if you want to open a Buy Order. Clicking the Buy button will close the New Order window and send the instructions to the broker. Enable maximum deviation from quoted price option: Enabling this option will activate the list of Pips where you can select a value for the maximum deviation. This option will help you to avoid requotes at a fast moving market. If the deviation between a requoted price and a requested price is equal or lower than specified parameter, the order executes at the requoted price automatically. If the deviation between a requoted price and requested price is more than specified parameter, the client has to confirm new price or decline it. It could be possible that after confirmation the market price has changed and the client could have another requote. Maximum deviation list: Select the maximum deviation pips value. Once you have decided to buy or sell at the current price press the Buy or Sell buttons to open a long or short position (Pic.4).
Pic.4 Choose Sell or Buy Clicking OK will place the Order by sending it to the broker (Pic. 5). Pic.5 Send Order You can watch your profits or losses in the terminal window as shown in (Pic. 6):
Pic. 6 Terminal window
II. How To Modify Your Buy/Sell Order We have placed our first order in the previous article. Now we are going to learn how to modify this placed order. Let's start with the limits that we can set to an order! Orders: Orders allow you to set an order to prevent big losses and to ensure that you make a profit as soon as possible. These are the types of the orders: Stop loss: Stop loss is a limit point that you set to your order. When a market reached the requested price, the order will be closed automatically. This is useful to minimize your lose when the market going against you. Stop loss orders are always set below the current bid price on a buy position or above the current ask price on a sell position. Trailing Stop: Trailing stop is a type of stop loss order that is set in pips either below that market price, for a long position, or above the market price, for a short position. The trailing Stop starts work only after the position became profitable. (Now I don t use a trailing stop but thought I d go over it anyways) Take profit: Take profit is similar to stop loss in that it s a limit point you set to your order. When a market reached the requested price, the order will be closed automatically. There are, however, two differences: There is no trailing point. The exit point must be set above the current market price, for long positions, and below the current market price for short positions. How to Modify an Opened Order (Stop Loss and Take Profit): Step 1: In the terminal window, right click on the order you want to modify. From the context menu, choose Modify or Delete Order (Pic. 7).
Pic.7 Context menu Typically, the Order Window will pop up, but in this case it's in a modification order mode (Pic. 8). Pic. 8 Modification order window
Step 2: In this window you will find two boxes to set (in pips) the Stop Loss and Take Profit prices (Pic.9). When the prices have been set (in pips) for those boxes, you have must click the "Copy as:" buttons under each of the two boxes to let MetaTrader convert your levels into prices. Or you can write the prices of Stop Loss and Take Profit directly in the Stop Loss and Take Profit boxes (Pic.10). Pic. 9 Price set up
Pic.10 Change price Step 3: Now you have to click the Modify button (Pic.11) to send your modification to the broker. You will be prompted with a window like (Pic.12). Click OK button. Pic. 11 Confirm modification
Pic. 12 Send Order This will set the limits you've chosen to the order and will appear in the terminal window as shown in (Pic. 13). Pic. 13 Modificated Orders Congratulation! You have set the Stop Loss and Take Profit levels to your order. When the price reaches these levels, it will be closed automatically to prevent more losses if the Stop Loss price has been reached, or take your profit if the Take Profit price is the one that has been reached. Now, you have to learn about setting the Trailing Stop. Trailing Stop (Again I don t use trailing stops but let s go over anyways) Stop Loss is intended for reducing of losses where the symbol price moves in an unprofitable direction. If the position becomes profitable, Stop Loss can be manually shifted to a break-even level. To automate this process, Trailing Stop was created. This tool is especially useful when
price changes strongly in the same direction or when it is impossible to watch the market continuously for some reason. NOTE: Metatrader 4 terminal should be connected. In case if MT4 Terminal disconnected the trailing stop doesn t work. How to set Trailing Stop: The Stop Loss and Take Profit limits, which you have learned to set, were sent to the broker. Even if you close MetaTrader, the broker knows when to stop the order. But, in the case of Trailing Stop, MetaTrader has to be login, because it sends the new Stop Loss level continuously to the broker. If you close MetaTrader, the broker will only know the last Stop Loss level MetaTrader sent before shutting down. Now let's set the Trailing Stop level to our Order. Step 1: In the terminal window, right-click on the order you want to set its Trailing Stop. And from the context menu, choose the Trailing Stop sub-menu (Pic. 14). The sub-menu will show you following commands: Pic.14 Set Level Delete All: To delete and all previous Trailing Stops you have set. None: It means no Trailing Stop level has been set.
15 Points, 20 Points.. 50 Points: These are the default points/pips level that you can choose from them. If you not interested in them, you can choose the custom command. Custom: Clicking this command will open the Custom Trailing Stop Window (Pic.15), which allows you to set a custom Trailing Stop level. Please note that the Trailing Stop must be greater than 15 Points. Pic.15 Custom level Step 2: Choose the level from the context menu, or set the custom level, and click OK. The Trailing Stop will be saved. MetaTrader will use this setting to move your Stop Loss level automatically, as long as you running the program. The Trailing stop can be disabled by setting "None" in the Trailing Stop sub-menu. Trailing stops of all open positions and pending orders will be disabled if the "Delete All" command of the same menu has been executed.
III. How To Close Your Buy/Sell Position In order to gain profit from the difference of courses, it's necessary to close the position. To close a position, the trader has to make a trade contrary to the first one he executed. For example, if the first trade was buying one lot of EUR/USD, one lot of the same currency must be sold to close the position. A position can be closed fully or partially, depending on the volume of a trade executed in the contrary direction. There are few ways to close position: Double-click at the open position in the Trade tab of the Terminal window Right click to obtain the context menu it in the Trade tab of the Terminal window and (Pic. 16) Pic. 16 Close Order menu Click Close Order. The Order #... window appears (Pic. 17).
Pic. 17 Close Order window
IV. How To Place A Pending Order Pending order is an instruction to open a position when the current price reaches the order level. There are four types of pending orders: (This Is The Type Of Order I Use Often To Trade Our MRR Areas) Buy Stop - an order to open a Buy position at a higher price than the price at the moment of placing the order; Sell Stop - an order to open a Sell position at a lower price than the price at the moment of placing the order; Buy Limit - an order to open a Buy position at a lower price than the price at the moment of placing the order; Sell Limit - an order to open a Sell position at a higher price than the price at the moment of placing the order. Look at pic. 18 for better visual understanding of Pending Order. Pic. 18 Pending order In order to place a pending order, open the "Order" window (Pic. 19) by any way described below:
Right click on the "Market Watch" window or on the "Trade" tab of the "Terminal" window and select New order from then context menu Press the F9 button Use the Tools -> New order menu sequence Right click on the chart window and select Trading -> New Order from the context menu Double click on the currency pair in the "Market Watch" window Then choose the Pending order item from the drop down list: Pic. 19 Pending Order window The following options may be changed in this window as well: Once the Place button is pressed, the instruction is sent directly to your broker. Once your broker confirms the order, it appears in the "Trade" tab of the "Terminal" window. Symbol - currency pair or CFD; Volume - transaction size in lots; Stop Loss - Stop Loss order level which will be activated once the pending order has been executed; Take Profit - Take Profit order level which will be activated once the pending order has been executed; Comment - your comments for the pending order; Type - the type of pending order: Buy Stop, Buy Limit, Sell Stop, Sell Limit; At price - pending order level; Expiry - if the box has not been checked the order is valid up to the time when you cancel it or when it is executed. If the box is checked the order is valid up to the moment specified in the box.
V. Open Positions And Pending Orders Additional Information After you make trades you can see them in "Trade" Tab. Here Is Where You Can See Order number of the trade Time what time the position was open Type Order type (buy, sell, buy stop, sell stop, buy limit, sell limit) Size the trade volume size. Symbol it shows instrument symbol.
Price open price level S/L stop loss level T/P take profit level Price current market price Commission it shows the commission if applied Swap it shows swap fees Profit profit in account currency
VI. How To Get Your Forex Account Trade History Information Forex Account History tab If you need to make some analysis over your closed orders or you just want to count overall amount of trades made, you can use "Account History" tab that is located at the bottom of Your Brokers MT4 trading platform. If for some reason you don t see any orders and the "Account History" tab looks like empty but you quite sure that you have made some orders, please open the "Account History" tab, than move mouse cursor to empty space in that tab and click the Right button. Please click on "All History" in the opened menu. After that operation all of your orders should appear.
VII. MetaTrader 4 Hot Keys List Here's the list of the hot keys available in MetaTrader 4: chart scrolling to the left chart scrolling to the right fast chart scrolling to the left or, if the scale is defined, chart scrolling up fast chart scrolling to the right or, if the scale is defined, chart scrolling down Numpad 5 restoring of automatic chart vertical scale after its being changed. If the scale was defined, this hot key will return the chart into the visible range Page Up fast chart scrolling to the left Page Down fast chart scrolling to the right Home move the chart to the start point End move the chart to the end point - chart zoom out + chart zoom in Delete delete all selected graphical objects Backspace delete the latest objects imposed into the chart window Enter open/close fast navigation window Esc close the dialog window F1 open the MetaTrader user guide F2 open the "History Center" window F3 open the "Global Variables" window F4 download MetaEditor F5 switch to the next profile F6 call the "Tester" window for testing the expert attached to the chart window F7 call the properties window of the expert attached to the chart window in order to change settings F8 call the chart setup window F9 call the "New Order" window F10 open the "Popup prices" window F11 enable/disable the full screen mode F12 move the chart by one bar to the left Shift+F 12 move the chart by one bar to the right Shift+F5 switch to the previous profile Alt+1 display the chart as a sequence of bars (transform into bar chart) Alt+2 display the chart as a sequence of candlesticks (transform into candlesticks)
Alt+3 display the chart as a broken line (transform into line chart) Alt+A copy all test/optimization results into the clipboard Alt+W call the chart managing window Alt+F4 close the client terminal Alt+Backspace or Ctrl+W undo object deletion Ctrl+A arrange all indicator windows heights by default Ctrl+B call the 'Objects List" window Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Insert copy to the clipboard Ctrl+E enable/disable expert advisor Ctrl+F enable "Crosshair" Ctrl+G show/hide grid Ctrl+H show/hide OHLC line Ctrl+l call the 'Indicators List" window Ctrl+L show/hide volumes Ctrl+P print the chart print the chart Ctrl+S save the chart in a file having extensions: "CSV", "PRN", "НТM" Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4 close the chart window Ctrl+Y show/hide period separators Ctrl+Z or Alt+Backspace undo the object deletion Ctrl+D open/close the "Data Window" Ctrl+M open/close the "Market Watch" window Ctrt+N open/close the "Navigator" window Ctrl+O open the "Setup" window Ctrl+R open/close the "Tester" window Ctrl+T open/close the "Terminal" window Ctrl+F6 activate the next chart window Ctrl+F9 open the "Terminal - Trade" window and switch the focus into it. After this, the trading activities can be managed with keyboard