Complete MetaTrader 5 Tutorial - 2021 Edition
Hi Traders, I'm Luke from Disciplined Trader. This video is a tutorial for the trading platform MetaTrader 5. I have added time links for the different sections of this tutorial in the description below if you need them. Let's straight in! To download Metatrader 5, you can go directly to metatrader5.com and download it from there.
Alternatively you can find a broker that offers the platform and sign up for a real or demo account. For the purposes of this video, I'll be using an ACY Securities account as they provide compatible MT5 accounts. There are various brokers that offer MT5 compatible accounts. Just go to any brokers website to find out if they have MT5 compatibility. Once you've downloaded and you’ve opened the platform, It will ask for the login details for your real or demo account if you have them.
Alternatively there should be an option to set up a new account if you don’t already have one. As you can see here, I have downloaded this platform though ACY Securities and it will allow me to open a demo or log into a live account – all I do is complete the forms and hit next. Once you’ve done that and logged in you should see the bars in the bottom right corner go green to show you are connected to the live price feed. It's worth mentioned that you won't see any price movement at the weekends as the markets are closed. Now you have the platform installed and opened, the next thing I will to go over is how to change the chart options. As you can see on my platform, I have some range bar charts and candlestick bar charts open with a green and black colour scheme.
The first thing I want to change is all the chart types to a candlestick charts. I can do this by either clicking the chart and then clicking the candlestick button. Or I can right click on the chart and then select the candlestick option from the menu that appears. You'll notice that there are three types of chart available, Bar, Candlestick and Line. Next to these options are the corresponding keyboard shortcuts if you need them at any time. The next thing I want to change is the colour scheme of the chart.
To do this right click on the chart, then click properties and go to the colors tab. Here you will be presented with a list of items and their corresponding colours. You can simply choose the colour you want from the drop down menu. I want a white background, black foreground, no grid with red and green candles with a black outline. You can play around with these settings as much as you need to get the charts just how you want them. MT5 gives you the ability to make chart templates to save the settings you have made for your charts.
For example, you will see if I open a new chart, the settings revert back to before we made the changes. So to save the chart settings you want, you need to make a template. To do this, click on the chart where you have made the settings amendments and then right click and on the chart and go to template and then press save template. You can call this anything you like. I’m going to call this ‘Trading’.
Then when I open a new chart, I can simply right click on it, go to template, then click ‘Trading’ and it will use the settings I saved. You can also get to the template menu by using the button on the quick bar at the top of the platform. These templates also save any indicators that are added to the chart as well, we'll cover indicators a little later in the video. A little tip when saving your template.
If you call your template ‘default’ it will open all new charts with these settings from here on. For example, I will save these chart settings as a new template called default, and when I open a new chart this time, it automatically uses those settings. There are a few ways to read what price the market is currently trading at. The first I to just look at the price axis on the chart and the current trading price will be highlighted. Alternatively you can use the Market Watch window as this shows the bid and the ask prices for all the markets on the list. If the window isn’t showing you can simply click the 'View' tab across the top of the screen and then select the 'market watch' option and this will appear.
Lastly you can look at the one click trading buttons and you will be able to see the bid and ask price on each chart. These are found in the top left corner of each chart. If these aren't showing on your chart, you can right click on the chart and then press one click trading, the buttons will now appears in the top left corner. To open a chart of a different market we need the market watch window. Again if this isn’t already open, you can open it by clicking the 'View' tab across the top of the screen and then selecting the 'market watch' option.
This window shows a long list of all the markets we can look at. Simply right click on the market you want to look at and press chart window and a chart will open up. If the market you are looking for isn’t on the list, you may need to add it. For example, I want to add the FTSE 100 to my list and there are a few ways to do this. First, you can use the symbols window. You can access this by either clicking the Symbols button on the toolbar across the top of the screen or right clicking in the market watch window and then clicking symbols.
You can then look through the different market categories and show or hide any market you like. All the market categories are listed on the left side of the window, with the available markets within the selected category shown on the right. It's worth mentioning that if you think a particular market is missing, it may be that your broker doesn't offer access to that market. I have a video talking about choosing the correct broker for you that I will link in the cards above and description below. I’m going to add the FTSE 100 so I’ll go into indices, Majors, and then click ftse100 and press show then OK. You'll notice my broker calls this market the UK100, this is the ticker symbol the broker uses for this market.
This ticker symbol may vary from broker to broker but you can usually find it from the description. Now the ftse 100 or UK100 will be in my market watch window. You can also add new markets to the market watch window by using the 'Click to add' feature at the bottom of the list.
Simply click the 'Click to add' button and start typing the name of the market you want to add. Using the FTSE100 again as an example, if I type FTSE100, you'll the corresponding market I am looking for appear. However, if I click it and then press enter, nothing will happen. This is because I need to use the market ticker symbol rather than the description name when using this feature. So by typing FTSE 100 into this search field I can find that the ticker symbol is UK100, I can then delete what I have typed and type the ticker symbol instead.
This time when I click the relevant market and press enter, the market will be added to my list. The market watch window also has a few extra tabs available, you can cycle through these by clicking the different tabs across the bottom of the window. The details tab shows you the price information for the selected market on the Symbols tab. The ticks tab also shows you the tick price movement for the selected market. The trading tab gives you access to the quick trading buttons for all the markets listed in your symbols tab.
We'll cover how these work later in the video. You can take a screenshot of a chart from the platform itself in a couple of ways. You can either right click on the chart you want to screenshot and press 'save as picture' or you can click on the chart you want to screenshot and then press the save as picture button on the toolbar across the top of the screen.
Both methods will open a dialogue box giving you the option to either take a picture of the entire workspace, just the selected chart or the selected chart with custom dimensions. It will give then give you the option of selecting a tick box if you want to save your image online. This method will redirect you to the MQL5 website and give you a shareable link for the screenshot.
If you don't tick the tick box, you can save the image locally on your computer. Both these methods are very handy if you have a journal or are back testing as you can include the screenshots in both by either copying the screenshot weblink into the journal or by inserting a link to the image on your computer. I'm showing how this is done on screen now using both my premium journal and strategy tester spreadsheet. Both of these are available on my website and I'll leave a link to them in the description below if you want to find out more. To change the time frame of a chart we can either right click on it and go to timeframes, then select the timeframe we want to view. Or we can use the timeframe quick bar at the top of the platform to quickly choose a different timeframe.
If this isn't showing on your screen, then go to the 'View' tab at the top of the screen, toolbars and then select 'Timeframes'. The timeframe menu will now appear and you can move the menu by clicking and dragging the line of dots on the left hand side of the menu. To change the timeframe of a chart using the menu, all you do is click the chart to want to change and then click the timeframe button you want.
You can also customise the timeframe menu to show only the timeframes you want to use. To do this, right click on the timeframe menu and press customise. A window will appear showing two lists of timeframes, the list on the left is the available timeframes to add to your menu and the list on the right is the timeframes currently on your menu. Using the buttons in the middle you can select timeframes and move them either on or off your timeframe menu.
Once you've got all the timeframes you want, you can arrange them using the up and down buttons on the right hand side. Once happy, just press close and the menu will be updated. You can also zoom in and out on a chart. Again this can be done by either right clicking on the chart and then pressing either zoom in or zoom out. Or you can use the zoom quick bar buttons at the top of the platform.
You can also use the + and - hotkeys on your keyboard to zoom in and out of the selected chart. To scroll back on a chart you simply left click on the chart, hold and drag it across to move backwards. You may notice that the chart keeps jumping back to the present time and this happens every time the current price changes. To turn this off so you can scroll back without been interrupted by price changes, simply press the button with two candles with a arrow pointing to the right. If you want to turn this feature back on, simply press the button again.
Alternatively you can right click on the chart and then either select or deselect the 'Auto Scroll' option to enable or disable this. MT5 doesn't let you click and drag to move the chart freely like other platforms such as TradingView do. Instead you can only scroll backwards and forwards as I just demonstrated.
You can click and drag on the price axis on the right hand side to make the candles shown bigger or smaller. Doing the same on the time axis essentially zooms in and out on the chart as you drag. To use drawing tools on a chart you simply use the quick bar at the top of the platform. Just select which tool you want to use and then start adding them to your chart.
By default, you can choose, vertical line, horizontal line, trendline, trend channel, fibonacci retracement tool, text tool and a selection of shapes. The first two buttons are cursor types; normal cursor and crosshair cursor. As with the timeframe menu, you can right click on the menu and press customise to change what is included on this menu. All available tools will be shown in the list on the left and all tools already on the menu will be shown on the right hand list. Using the buttons in the middle of the window, you can move the tools to your desired locations.
You can then rearrange your menu order using the up and down button son the right hand side of the window. To add a drawing tool to the chart simply select the tool you want and click on the chart where you want to put it. Once applied to the chart, you will see little boxes on the tool to show the tool is selected, as you can see on the rectangle tool I have applied. When the tool is selected, you can move and resize it.
To deselect it, simply double click on it. You can reselect it by double clicking it again if required. You can change the settings of a drawing tool by double clicking on it on the chart so the little boxes appears on the tool, then you can right click on it and press properties. On the common tab, you can change characteristics like the colours used, name, description and line thicknesses among others.
The parameters tab lets you change the precise coordinates the tool is placed at. The visualisation tab lets you choose which timeframes the tool is visible on. Once you are happy, just press okay. To delete a drawing just double click it then hit delete on your keyboard or right click and press delete.
Or once selected, right click on the tool and then click delete To see a list of any drawing tools on a chart at any one time, you can right click the chart and then select 'Objects List'. This will bring up a window with a list of any drawing tools added to that chart. From here you can select each tool and use the buttons on the right to either locate where exactly that tool is, amend it's properties or delete it completely. You can measure the price change from two points by using the crosshair cursor. Select it from the drawing tools quick bar and simply left click on your chart and drag to where to want to measure to. You will be shown four numbers – the first is the price the crosshair is currently pointing at, the second is how many candles you have measured over, the third is the pip change with one decimal place.
So for example, if it shows 504, that is a change of 50.4 pips. And the last number is the percentage change in price from the start point to the end point. You can also quickly select the crosshair tool by clicking your mouse wheel. To add indicators to you chart, simply click on the chart you want to add an indicator to and then go to insert at the top of the platform and then indicators. You will then see a list of different indicators you can add to your chart.
Once you select an indicator, a window will appear so you can configure the look and settings of that indicator. If you ever need to get back to this window, you can simply right click on the indicator and select properties. Using the MACD as an example, on the parameters tab you can specify the settings you want, you can add fixed line levels in the levels tab, you can amend the scale of the indicator in the scale tab and you can choose which timeframes the indicator is visible on in the visualisation tab. You can also change an indicator settings or remove it from your chart by right clicking on the chart and going to indicator list. You can then select which indicator you want to change and either edit the settings or delete it completely from the chart. Volume indicators can be found in the indicator menus as just demonstrated.
They can also be added by right clicking on your chart and then selecting either volumes or tick volumes depending on which is available for the market you are looking at. You can resize any chart by simply dragging one of the sides or corners to the size you want. Metatrader does has an inbuilt function to arrange the charts for you. Simply go to the window menu at the top of the platform and choose from either tile windows, cascade windows, tile horizontally or tile vertically. You will also see a tab along the bottom of the chart window for each chart window you have open.
If you are looking at the charts in full screen, you can toggle through the chart windows using these tabs. If you want you have the charts open over two monitors, press the restore down button on top right corner of the platform and drag it over the two monitors. You can then arrange the charts manually over the two monitors. You can enter a trade by clicking the new order button on the quick bar at the top of the platform. A little dialogue box will open asking for more details about the position you want to open.
You simply select the market you want to trade from the drop down, choose what order type you want to use, set the position size in the volume box, set a take profit level and a stop level if you want to – if not leave blank. And lastly choose the fill policy you want. Fill or kill means that the trade will only be opened if the specified volume can be achieved, if not the trade will be cancelled. Immediate or cancel means that the trade will be opened with maximum amount of volume available if below the specified volume amount, the remaining requested volume will be cancelled. Once happy, press either the buy or sell button to execute the order you desire.
You can also quickly enter a trade by using the one click trade buttons on each chart. These are visible in the top left corner of each chart and on the trading tab of the market watch window. If the buttons aren't showing on your chart, you can right click on the chart and then press one click trading. The first time you use these, you should see a window appear making sure you understand how these buttons work. If happy, agree to the terms and press OK.
The buttons will then be useable on your charts. To use them simply enter the position size you want in the little box and click either buy or sell and your trade will be executed straight away. You can also quickly add pending orders to a chart by right clicking on the price level you want to set the pending order at and then hovering over the trading menu.
This will give you the option of setting various orders depending on whether you are above or below the current price. It will use the position size volume currently entered in the one time trading box. Once you click an order type, this will be executed.
Any open trades you have will be displayed in the trade tab in the toolbox window at the bottom of your platform. If this window isn’t open, simply go to the View tab across the top of the screen and then select toolbox. The window should now be open at the bottom of your screen. Once you can see your open trades in the trade tab, you can right click on each and you will be given a list of various actions, one of which is the ability to show the profits in terms of a monetary value or just the pip value. You can add a stop loss or take profit level by clicking and dragging on the dotted line representing your trade on the chart.
Depending which way you drag will determine which level you are setting. Once you are happy with the level, just let go and the stop loss or take profit level will be set. You can quickly delete these by right clicking on the dotted line representing the level and then clicking cancel. You can also set a stop loss level or a take profit level using the toolbox window.
To add or edit these levels, double click either box on the trade entry in the toolbox window and a dialogue box will open. Then simply enter the level you want each to be at and press modify. These levels will then be shown on your chart. You can also access this window by right clicking on the trade entry and then click modify trade. To add a trailing stop loss level to your trade, right click the trade entry in the toolbox window. Then hover over trailing stop and you will see a list of options.
MT5 has provided a list of interval stops you can choose, you can also make a custom trail stop by selecting the custom option. Clicking this will open a small dialogue box asking you for the number of pips you want to set the trail stop at. Just enter the number you want and press ok. You can set no trail stop level or delete any set by again right clicking on the trade entry in the toolbox window and selecting either 'none' or 'delete all' To close a trade immediately, you can click the little cross at the far right side of the trade entry in the terminal window. You can also right click on the trade entry and then press close position.
You can also close the trade from the chart window by right clicking on the dotted line that represents the trade and then pressing close trade. You can view all your past completed trades by clicking on the account history tab in the terminal window. It will show you the order number, time, date, trade direction, position size, market traded, price you entered, stop loss level and take profit level if set, date and time you closed the position, price you closed the position, any swap amendments and the p/l for the trade. You can generate a report of your trading activity from the metatrader platform by right clicking in the trade tab window of the toolbox window.
Once you have right clicked, select report and then select whether you want it as an XML file (spreadsheet) or an HTML file (web page). Once you select one of the options, it will ask you to save the report on your computer, select the folder you want to save it in and press save. Once saved, it should automatically open the report for you. You can add custom indicators to MT5 in the same way you could in MT4.
To do this first you need to download the custom indicator you want to install. For the purpose of this video, I am going to download an indicator for free from the MQL5 website. Once downloaded, copy the indicator file by right clicking on it and clicking copy. Then back in the MT5 platform, click on the fil button in the top left corner of the window and then select 'Open data folder'.
This folder should open up Once opened, click MQL5, then click indicators. Then right click and paste the custom indicator file into this file location. You can close the file explorer window down now. Close MT5 and reopen the application, once opened again you new custom indicator should be installed.
You can find it by either going to the navigator window, opening the indicators tree and you should see any added indicators below the examples folder. You can either double click it to add it to the selected chart or you can drag and drop it on the chart you want to add it to. You will get a window pop up asking you to confirm any settings, once happy just press okay and the indicator will be added to the chart.
You can also find the new custom indicator by going to the insert tab at the top of the screen, indicators, custom and your new indicator will be on this list, usually at the bottom. The navigator window is usually located on the left hand side of the screen, if it's not showing you can enable it by clicking on the view tab and then selecting navigator. The first thing you'll see in this window is the connected trading accounts.
Here you can see my ACY securities demo account is connected. You can add more than one account to your MT5 platform by right clicking on Accounts and then clicking log into trade account. This will take you through the same process we covered when we first logged into our account. The next menu down shows all the indicators available to you. These are separated into folders to make locating the indicator you are looking for a little easier.
Any installed expert advisors can be found with the expert advisors sub menu. Same for any installed scripts, these are found in the scripts sub menu. The market menu will open the MQL5 market search box where you can purchase various indicators, EAs and scripts to my knowledge. I believe this is much easier to navigate from an actual web browser however. The signals sub menu is there for any signal services you are connected to.
More info on how this works is provided by clicking the how this works link. You can enable the grid on your charts by right clicking on the chart and then clicking grid. This will display the grid using the colour settings set in the chart properties window.
If you still can't see a grid when you enable it this way, open the chart properties menu and just make sure the grid colour isn't set to the same colour as the background or set to none. To open the depth of market window, you can go to the view tab at the top of the screen and then hover over depth of market. This will give you the option of opening the depth of market for any markets with charts currently open or let you find the market you want from the lists below. You can also open the depth of market for a market by right clicking on a chart and then clicking depth of market. This will open the depth of market in a new window.
The data shown in this window will depend on what data is available and what your broker provides. There are a variety of differences between MetaTrader 4 and Metatrader 5. MT4 seems to be more geared towards forex trading than anything else.
Whereas MT5 covers a wider range of traders including stocks but is thought to be a little more difficult to use. Some of the main obvious differences are mt4 having 9 timeframes and mt5 having 21. Mt4 has four order types whereas mt5 has six. The coding lanuage used in MT4 is MQL4, MT5 uses MQL5. MQL4 is seen as easier to use than MQL5 but also more basic and capable of less complex scripts. Mt4 has 30 built in indicators to MT5s 38 built in indicators.
MT5 also has depth of market which MT4 does not. I'll link below to a helpful web page that has broken the differences between the platform down quite well if you want to check it out. And that concludes this tutorial traders. I really hope you've found it useful. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comment section below.
Don't forget to subscribe for more content like this. Thanks again for watching traders and have a great day.
2021-12-11 16:57
