MT5 - ready for prime time?

Last time I looked, about a year ago I guess, few brokers (none?) were offering MT5 as a live platform. Now, Alpari and a few others have MT5 available for live trading so I'm going to start running it on demo to see how she works.

So what's the consensus on MT5 vs MT4? There's not been too much discussion of late, at least, I haven't found it.

I realize that the two are incompatible code wise, but that's not an issue for me. I only have some standard trade handling code to convert and then I should be good to go.

MLQ5 as a language has a lot of things that I found missing from MLQ4 and so I was keen to switch but, at the time, the lack of brokers supporting MT5 made it a non-option.

I'd appreciate input from those who are or have used MT5.

Performance and reliability MT5 vs MT4? Can you run EAs 24 x 7?

Anything else to be aware of...?

As a programmer, I haven't looked at MT5 yet.

However, from what I've read, the incompatibility is a huge issue for many traders. There are many thousands of mission critical third party MT4 indicators and EAs out there, and no doubt many more are being written, as I type this. The br0ker industry is extremely competitive, and there's more incentive for br0kers to spend time and money promoting and supporting MT4 add-ons that will likely improve their market share, than on MT5, unless or until such time that the trading community welcomes it.

It makes sense to me that, until MetaQuotes (or a third party) develops a fully automated code translator, MT5 will struggle to gain acceptance, and MT4 will continue its tenure.

Its been going on 2 years now that I have been predicting that MT5 was still 6 months to 1 year away from wide adoption. I think I will have to change that now and say its at least 1 year and more likely never going to be widely accepted. The MT5 killer was the porting of MT4 to the tablet recently announced. MetaQuotes surprised me with that move. I felt certain that they only port MT5 to tablets and smart phones in order to entice people to upgrade. But in the end I think it came down to either converting MT4 and hold their market position or watch some competitor grab that market and eventually put them out of business.

As far as Hanover's comment about automated code upgraders - that will never happen. Metaquotes as much as admitted it when they introduced the MT5 EA wizard. I was a little surprised they haven't come up with a similar wizard for customizing indicators. I think they might have a blind spot and think the hundreds they offer are good enough.

There have been feeble attempts from 3rd party vendors to provide something for code conversion. The one I tried failed on even my simplest EA. A few EA builders are offering both MT4 and MT5 code output, so I think the upgrade path will probably be this. What I mean is that people will take their existing EA and build a simplified version with an automated builder, then hand code the extra features that they don't support. But for some, even the smallest code in MT5 is going to be more than they can handle due to the complexity of MQL5 vs MQL4.

Is MQL5 that more complex that MQL4? I didn't imagine it was going to be like that. Interesting and kind of worrying.

MT4 is just about the easiest programming language to learn that there is today. Today's modern languages like Java and C++ are much harder to learn than say C and Pascal. Similarly, MQL5 is tough because it is more sophisticated has object oriented features and event handling. Some who found MQL4 too restrictive and primitive will like it more, but others will struggle learning it.

I've always wanted to learn Java and/or C++. So you are saying if I learn to program in MQL5 I'll be learning how to program Java, kind of?

Some of the MQL5 features will help in learning Java, but of course Java is a much richer language and more complicated. For someone who knows Java, learning MQL5 would be comparatively easy.

Will the transition to MQL5 be similar to how it was from MQL3 to MQL4?

In my mind MQL3 to MQL4 was for the most part syntax. Won't it be similar in the jump from 4 to 5?

I've been thinking about it but in no hurry to update. I would rather just stay with MQL4 for now.

Really the jump from 3 to 4 was actually quite big in some aspects... come to think of it. (It seems like another life time. prehistoric language -lol)

As a creator of trading algos I have done significant coding in MT4 and was not looking forward to a move to MT5.

However, I very recently took that challenge on as it seemed backwards to develop a completely new system in MT4.

So some thoughts so far:

Despite what everybody seems to think you don't have to use objects with the exception of submitting a trade request and getting the result back and that is straight forward with plenty of examples about. You can choose to use the standard command syntax instead for everything else.

Yes there is a learning curve but if you have reasonable programming skills that is no issue.

MT5 is so much faster on execution and if that is matched on the server side then you are possibly getting better fills with less delay in the transaction.

The ability to use events is a major step forward that lets you have proper interaction with your EA whilst it is running, ie: control buttons, inputs etc.

Given the MT5 capability and enhancements I have found it frustrating that the only place you can submit multiple lines of text to the screen is via the Comment command despite all the new object types. Obviously you can code around this but is a stupid oversight that the text objects do not allow the line feed character to function.

As for metatrader and the brokers supporting MT4 forever, sure they say that but my broker only recently turned MT5 on and already they are offering narrower spreads on MT5 - I think they call that the carrot to transfer over...... So it will reach a point where you won't want to be on MT4 despite them still supporting it - a typical corporate tactic expect more..

So I would say that if you have any major development to do then start using MT5 and if you only have a small amount of stuff to convert then start using MT5 - the tricky bit is if you have a large library of MT4 stuff that you want to rewrite. Althongh I would argue that most full time traders don't use that many EAs or indicators and I would suggest that most of these big libraries are unused or useless....

I would never count on MT4 forever. Some said the same thing about MT3, but rules and laws changed and support for MT3 dried up quite quickly.

I'm sure it will be the same end for MT4 or some cheaper spread offered with MT5 like you said to gain traction.

Thanks for the info.

I remember reading a long time ago about a restriction with MT5 indicators that would not allow an indicator to create an object. Is that true? Did I interpret what I read correctly?


For me -- if true -- this is still a major drawback of MT5 because I make extensive use of indicators that draw and/or manipulate objects.

Here's an example of a program that I wanted to know how-and-if MT5 could handle it. "AML_v2.mq4" is an indicator that has the user draw a pitchfork, rename it to the desired object Name ("AML1"), and then the indicator will add various trendlines parallel to the pitchfork, and at specific distances so that they end up being "Warning Lines" and "Quartiles". It can also draw various transformed pitchforks, e.g. Modified Schiff, Schiff and Catalin (These capabilities are essential for Pitchfork traders, and MT4/MT5 doesn't have it built in).

The terminology of the pitchfork lines is just "details". What is most important to me is how would one go about writing or converting such a program that generates and/or manipulates objects using MQL5?

FYI, one of the features of this indicator is it allows the user to move the main pitchfork around. At the next tick, all the generated objects will shift to maintain the proper slope. It is not all that important for such a program to catch every tick, but it is important that if the user moves the main object, that it doesn't take very long to update the rest of the lines (like maybe 1-2 seconds).

So, maybe an "Indicator" would not make sense for such a program in MT5, but perhaps an EA or whatever else there is. HOWEVER, I wouldn't want to be restricted to being able to add just one such program to the chart. This one in fact has a "feature" to allow it to be added multiple times, so that one can auto-generate the lines for more than one "Type" of pitchfork at the same time.


Here's a link to the post with the AML_v2.mq4 indicator and a couple pictures showing the lines it generates.
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...13#post5778713


(P.S. As I state in that other post, I don't actively use this indicator; however I do use a private one that does very much the same thing, namely that it generates a lot of calculated objects. If I'm forced someday to move to MT5, I have to solve this problem one way or another).


Thanks for any help/tips/advice.