Tip 1 : Turn off the grid
Grid view crowds the page, you want to be able to see the price action nice and clearly. Especially, the less noise on the screen the better for when you need to make fast paced decisions. You want as a little clutter as possible, hit the keys: “CTRL” + “G” to remove or right click the chart and scroll down to and click on “Grid” to remove.
Tip 2 : Show the Ask Line
This is one of the most important things you can do when it comes to using MT4, showing the ask line helps when it comes to placing a trade manually, often the spread can be much wider than you expect and you may not realise the spread has jumped out 5 – 10 pip more than your target entry point when you come to place a trade, showing the ask line is a great way to quickly visualise your entry point if taking a long trade or to see how much price needs to move on a short sell to hit your profit target. to show the ask line select the chart and click “F8” and click on “show ask line”.
Tip 3 : Don't use white backgrounds
Most newbie traders set white backgrounds because it looks good, at the end of the day it’s hell on your eyes, when you’re new to trading you need to put in a lot of ground work reading charts for long hours or getting up in the middle of the night to check a trade – the last thing you want to be doing is staring at white screen for long hours or in the middle of the night, save your eyes and keep the background black or use dark tones – never white, and a trader you need to good rest and a starring a white screen at night can easily cause too much blue light exposure and disrupted sleeping patterns. to set the chart colours select the chart and press the “F8” button and select the colour tab in the top left of the pop-up screen.
Tip 4 : MT4's best kept secret
The IceFX Spread monitor is one of the best free MT4 indicators available, A must-have tool for every trader, as a trader you need to get know the changes in spread during the day and understand them well also it’s the best way to compare a broker when you can record their live spreads, this is a great tool for mapping out the spreads – the system saves the spread data to folder in MT4. To install go to the “Market” tab on the bottom of your MT4 terminal, then in the market search type in ” icefx spread monitor” , click on it and hit “download”, when installed drag it onto the price chart, leave the indicator running all day on a low timeframe chart day to record the spread in detail.
Tip 5 : Set a 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”.
Tip 6 : Use 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”.
Tip 7 : Don't get destroyed by the New's
Too often Newbie traders are entering the market not aware that a major economic news event is about to happen and can easily get stuck on the wrong side of the market, this is one of the best tools you can get – on chart economic news is a great way to make sure you’re prepared for upcoming events.