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Metaquotes is the Company that developed the MetaTrader 4 (MT4). After accomplishing great popularity in the trading community, the Company then came up with a new trading software MetaTrader 5 which is known as MT5. This unique software provides some special functionalities, making it one of the most reputed platform among the forex traders.
Why was MT5 introduced?
An obvious question must have arrived in your thoughts that if MT4 was already popular, then what the need for new software was? Traders, MT5 was designed to do what MT4 could not do.
MT4 supports trading in the Forex market and no other market. And, this brand new MT5 was introduced in 2010, keeping this multiple market exposure in mind. So, MT5 is a multi-asset trading platform that includes the Forex market.
Needless to say, with MT5, you can easily trade in stocks, commodities, and futures & options. With this, traders will have exposure to a centralized trading exchange. Whereas, Forex is a wholly decentralized trading market where the big players dominate the game.
At that time in 2010, the Metaquotes might have foreseen a rising demand for trading in stocks and commodities.
Key Differences between the MT4 & MT5
Firstly, the most significant update was in terms of the programming language. MT4 uses MQL4 language, whereas MT5 runs on MQL5, which permits “black box” programming. In the software world, a black box basically means about backtesting outputs, given specific inputs. That means control can be achieved just with inputs and outputs without dwelling into its interior structure.
Another noteworthy feature is the impressive and super fast capability to backtest the programs. Here, the traders can test multiple trading strategies at the same time, which would save a massive amount of their time.
Also, there have been additions in the pending order types. MT4 has four types of pending orders, whereas, in MT5, traders get six types of pending orders. Have a look at the respective pending order types enlisted below:
Pending Order types in MT4 –
- Buy stop
- Buy limit
- Sell limit
- Sell stop
Pending Order types in MT5 in addition to the above four –
- Buy stop limit
- Sell stop limit
A few more differences include the addition of Depth of Market (DOM) and the economic calendar.
Latest Updates in MT5
The best part with the Metaquote team is that they keep on fixing the bugs and other user issues on a timely basis. The most recent update had come up, on 13 Dec. 2019. There were multiple significant upgrades done in every component involved with MT5.
On the terminal side, the inability to delete an Expert advisor from a chart with no data was resolved. The Chart header display under Wine also got fixed.
Major changes happened in the MQL5 programming language used by MT5. Loading and compilation speed has been drastically improved with which traders can have faster trades. Also, earlier single-click events were not handled on charts. Traders had to double click on a chart to trigger respective events. However, with this update, a double click would be passed as a single click event to the MQL5 program.
Noticeably, there had been one significant update on the Tester front, related to testing symbol. Before the update, due to some errors, the testing symbol in settings used to appear empty. The probable reason behind this glitch was switching between trading accounts with different sets of trading instruments. However, the issue has been fixed now. So, from now on, if any symbol is unavailable with the currently connected trading account, then the first available symbol would get selected.
Conclusion
MetaTrader 5 is undoubtedly the industry’s one of the most dominant trading software available today. The multi-asset trading feature is something catchy if the trader has been an MT4 user wherein only forex trading was possible. And, with its developers putting in tremendous efforts to make it better with every update, steals the show!
However, from a regular trader’s perspective, things might appear different, depending on their trading requirements. Traders look for software that is faster, more reliable, and stable. For beginners, MT4 might be a better option than MT5, considering its ease of use. So, in a few cases, MT4 could win the game.
