The incredible resilience of MT4 vs MT5 | Forex Factory

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The incredible resilience of MT4 vs MT5

  • #1
  • First Post: Nov 7, 2017 5:08am Nov 7, 2017 5:08am
Like many of us I discovered forex and trading across websites, blogs, forums. Just after, you find a (doesn’t look too much as a scam) broker, open a demo account and then download the first platform available to start your new life.

On the next months you have downloaded dozen, hundred, thousands? amazing, useless, awful, must to have indicators and applied many holy grail strategies (ok, not as good as that, but the next one will be the good one).
Quite recently after reading a nice article on a new product I discovered that the indicator was a MT5 one’s. During the last 5 years, I have to admit that I didn’t met too many of them and often I don’t go further. But this time, I really wanted to learn more and decided to download and install the MT5 platform. Boring process across a lazy VPS, but was finally able to make everything properly working. Just needed a bit of time to load properly the indicator in the good file process.

And so what ?

Well, ok, you have your MT5 indicator loaded on the new platform, but all your strategies, all your others indicators are not here, you feel a bit like when you have a totally new computer, a bit naked, and you don’t know where to start. I came back to my lovely MT4 platform and decided to investigate a bit more, why MT4 is still in the place ?!

For the story, MT4 was released in 2005, more than 12 years ago ! MT5 was released 5 years later in 2010. It’s obvious that MT5 didn’t took the lead. Often when a company release a new version of a product you can observe a period of transition before shifting to the new one. You have what is call the Early Adopter, people always trying and buying the new product and then people shifting when the current version become too old. When Microsoft launch a new version you can expect a 3 years transition. When Google launch a new Android system, you have to wait before seeing the proper shift. But here we are reaching more than 7 years after the new versions and nothing is changing. When you take a look to Google Trends you can see the huge difference and the fact that MT5 is not trending at all or taking more share.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/yb...MlfVW8fz1RJmxg

I took a look to 10 different famous brokers. They are one of the main providers for the trading platforms. 8 of 10 are not proposing the MT5 system. Meaning that the main companies working with Metatrader are not convinced or didn’t saw the interest of having the new platform available. It has a huge impact in the low adoption level.

Finally, 90% of indicators and strategies available to download are under MT4. MT5 is a totally different coding language and converting a MT4 to MT5 is not a one stop click situation. More the code is complex less it is easy to transform from one to the other. As majority of the top indicators and strategies are not available on the new platform, nobody will shift to this one.

MT5 is giving some new interesting features such as:

 

  1. 6 types of pending orders (vs 4 in MT4)
  2. Additional Chart time frame (M2, MI3, MI..)
  3. Built-in economic calendar
  4. Depth of Market

But it seems it’s not enough to convince programmers to make the move and Metaquotes doesn’t want to kill the MT4 platform for creating an artificial shift from one to another. They are afraid to loose the current market share they have. MT4 still here for a long time !

And you, why are you still on MT4?

PipsFisherman

BetaPipsTP2SL5 All Time Return: 4.6%
  • #2
  • Nov 7, 2017 6:18am Nov 7, 2017 6:18am
i like mt5 if comes into replace mt4
Success is a Journey Not a Destination....... kind regards ramzam
  • #3
  • Nov 7, 2017 6:39am Nov 7, 2017 6:39am
The main reason that Forex traders around the world are not adopting MT5......that MT5 by default abide to FIFO rules..........No one is obliged to trade by American rules
atheer1
  • #4
  • Nov 7, 2017 7:00am Nov 7, 2017 7:00am
It's very simple! MT4 > MT5 !

I have commented on this issue many times. MT4 is simply a better platform in almost every aspect, and the majority of traders know this! MT4 is simple, relatively stable, and already offers everything the traders need. It just works!
MT5 is........ooh man. Where to start.....?

All of the "new" features in mt5 are useless. There is not a single function or feature in mt5 which cannot be implemented with mql4 !
6 types of pending orders ? who needs that?
Additional time frames ? who needs that? (you can make your own time frames with any length with mql4 , including real time tick charts)
Built-in economic calendar ? who needs that? Forex factory offers the best (free) calendar in the world! And there are many free apps to import this calendar inside MT4 (if you are too lazy to open a browser).
Depth of Market ? Completely useless for 99% of FX traders. (DOM is only useful for exchange traded products).
  • #5
  • Nov 7, 2017 7:25am Nov 7, 2017 7:25am
I was in contact with a coder a few months ago, he wrote mql5 programs for both mt4 and mt5 and he stated that coding for mt5 is alot easier due to the language...mt4 is a nightmare in comparison. This was just my experience in talking to him.......it has nothing to do with trading and functionality, as noted above, just an aside....
  • #6
  • Nov 7, 2017 7:26am Nov 7, 2017 7:26am
I join you on these points alphaomega.

Many of the new features are technically useless.
Just few developers are happy about specific technics but it doesn't change anythings for the day to day job.
When I say that biggest brokers (in term of volume and number of clients / I'm not speaking about which
one is the best) are not proposing MT5 platform, it's definitively a good signal that MT4 is still a great product.
BetaPipsTP2SL5 All Time Return: 4.6%
  • #7
  • Nov 7, 2017 7:39am Nov 7, 2017 7:39am
How many times has that discussed right now?

Quoting alphaomega
It's very simple! MT4 > MT5 !
No, it's not that simple. And it's not true either, even when some things are worse than MT4 (like the separated tester).

Quoting alphaomega
There is not a single function or feature in mt5 which cannot be implemented with mql4
Anything that has to do with available tick data can't be implemented with mql4, because youd don't have it out of the box (please don't argument again with the possibility to build up an own database that requires an always running terminal). Yes, the informations in the tick data could be done better, but better having one instead of guessing what happend with an useless M1 candle.
  • #8
  • Nov 7, 2017 3:05pm Nov 7, 2017 3:05pm
Thanks everyone for your point of view, I see that there is still a big debate on the subject and everyone is finding value in both solutions depending of the needs.
BetaPipsTP2SL5 All Time Return: 4.6%
  • #9
  • Nov 7, 2017 8:50pm Nov 7, 2017 8:50pm
Why are you still on MT4?

It’s like heroin, I’m hooked and can’t quit !!!
It takes a lot for me to IGNORE you, but you can try.
  • #10
  • Nov 7, 2017 9:18pm Nov 7, 2017 9:18pm
Quoting Erebus
Why are you still on MT4? It’s like heroin, I’m hooked and can’t quit !!!
I've tried MT5, it has a lot of issues. Hopefully MT4 will continue to be around for a long time.
Here's Tom with the weather.
  • #11
  • Nov 7, 2017 11:35pm Nov 7, 2017 11:35pm
I suspect that one big reason why MT4 has been slow to die is the huge trader reliance on thousands of third party indicators and EAs, that can't easily be migrated to MT5.
  • #12
  • Nov 8, 2017 12:07pm Nov 8, 2017 12:07pm
Quoting hanover
I suspect that one big reason why MT4 has been slow to die is the huge trader reliance on thousands of third party indicators and EAs, that can't easily be migrated to MT5.
That's for sure one reason. And now the big BUT. How many of these thousands of Indis, Scripts and EAs are worth to be migrated? How many are duplicates or can be replaced by standard indicators (if they would be more flexible)? If MT act clever in the future such flexible indicators can be a big argument.

I think it's more the fixedness of the traders that slows down the process, even if they are not profitable with the trading they searching for the holy grail stuff in existing MT4 portfolio than in MT5. Because switching mean new learn process and if that holy grail would exist on MT5 all the profitable traders would already on that (they are not or we don't know any, so we convinced MT5 is not worth the efford).

On the other hand. If someone had a profitable system it would be careless not to migrate that. If the day comes when your broker shut down MT4 you must be able to switch. So these people should have already the system migrated and don't care about the switch.
  • #13
  • Nov 8, 2017 12:39pm Nov 8, 2017 12:39pm
All Metaquotes wants by forcing the switch is to make more money for themselves. MT4 indicators rendered obsolete, who is gonna do all the translation to MT5 for free, you get to do it through MT5 freelance where they raised min price from 10 to 20 to 30 usd in a year and they get a handsome percentage out of it. Are you going to order from someone to translate from you 5 indis already free in MT4 for MT5 since no one is gonna do it for free? In the future they will definitely lock down indis made through the freelance section to your account/pc so you can't share even a simple rsi alerts indi or the cost of it with someone else. Then you get the cloud processing for strategy tester, cause probably they messed up the multi-threaded performance of MT5's ST so you get to use other people's resources when optimizing an EA and they get their share of profit too.

They could have stayed on MT4 the whole time solely by upgrading mql like they did with v600 and add multi-thread capability. MT5 doesn't offer much more then that.
  • #14
  • Edited 3:12pm Nov 8, 2017 12:45pm | Edited 3:12pm
Quoting sakisf
All Metaquotes wants by forcing the switch is to make more money for themselves. MT4 indicators rendered obsolete, who is gonna do all the translation to MT5 for free, you get to do it through MT5 freelance where they raised min price from 10 to 20 to 30 usd in a year and they get a handsome percentage out of it. Are you going to order from someone to translate from you 5 indis already free in MT4 for MT5 since no one is gonna do it for free? In the future they will definitely lock down indis made through the freelance section to your account/pc...
I agree they converted MT in an apple style business but at least from coder point of view MT5 tools for develop are largely superior. Debug code in tester solves the big problem when you debug tools in real time...
Try don't lose pants never...
  • #15
  • Nov 8, 2017 2:59pm Nov 8, 2017 2:59pm
Quoting sakisf
All Metaquotes wants by forcing the switch is to make more money for themselves. MT4 indicators rendered obsolete, who is gonna do all the translation to MT5 for free, you get to do it through MT5 freelance where they raised min price from 10 to 20 to 30 usd in a year and they get a handsome percentage out of it. Are you going to order from someone to translate from you 5 indis already free in MT4 for MT5 since no one is gonna do it for free? In the future they will definitely lock down indis made through the freelance section to your account/pc...
Please do not misunderstand my comment, but isn't that we all want? I mean : get payed a bit more? Earn a bit more?
__________________________________

That is not an issue (at least not the way I see it). The issues are different :

Of being "already free" : the wide, wide ned market is filled with "already free" stuff that is simply renamed, colored a bit differently and sold as something else. Real creators of that stuff are sick of it and don't expect too much free stuff any more. The renaming, "wrapping", stealing disease is so wide spread that there will be no going back to the "heroic times" of sharing everything for free (I have been talking to quite a few coders - I mean real coders - and they all share the same sentiment) and that is not a result of MT doing something but a result of people misusing what once was a good idea. So much about good ideas and keeping them alive ... The code migration need when it comes to mt5 is simply used not to make same mistakes as sharing everything has proven to be a big mistake in some cases

And from the MT side : some of the bugs in the mt4 build 1090 are so illogical that one has to wonder how they can exist (just to mention probably the most benign : see the parameter info tool-tip for the 5th parameter of SetIndexStyle() in mt4 and try to remain serious when you see it). In the best case the errors are coming simply from loss of interest of people engaged in the mt4 project (who would like to work on a an obviously dying project). But the worst case is far, far worse ...
___________________________________

Let us wait and see - some things always tend to float out and eventually we shall learn what exactly is going on. In the mean time : I really hope that they are going to solve at least some of the equally bad bugs in mt5 if they expect it to be accepted more than it is now
  • #16
  • Edited 3:39pm Nov 8, 2017 3:18pm | Edited 3:39pm
Quoting sakisf
All Metaquotes wants by forcing the switch is to make more money for themselves. MT4 indicators rendered obsolete, who is gonna do all the translation to MT5 for free, you get to do it through MT5 freelance where they raised min price from 10 to 20 to 30 usd in a year and they get a handsome percentage out of it. Are you going to order from someone to translate from you 5 indis already free in MT4 for MT5 since no one is gonna do it for free? In the future they will definitely lock down indis made through the freelance section to your account/pc...
I agree with braintheboss, and to expand further, it's not a grand conspiracy... MetaQuotes (MQ) has been in the game for a very long time. I remember starting with MT3, and back then they weren't trying to be a fully developed quant platform but rather they just wanted their own language for very simple trading activities, albeit a very crude one. As MT evolved, MQ constantly had to make compromises to their platform to appease the old code and user-base resulting in a less than ideal development framework. MT5 was a rather ambitious project for the company, and in order to expand the platform into other asset classes and broker type, some of the old (and terrible) compromises of the dev framework had to be scrapped. I agree with you that making a marketplace was the worst fucking business decision ever. Instead of increasing the MT5 community, the market-place has put MQ on a downward path and only serves to de-legitimize MT5 as a serious trading platform. Look around here... I left forex for a number of years, and when I came back the development community was a wasteland, and nobody wants to share their code anymore with fears that some scammer will rip it off and publish it to the market. Have you seen how much these guys make with market products? It's a joke. I've seen more money change hands in one tick of trading than most of these guys make in a year of selling products. You only get into the marketplace game if you want it as a hobby, like grandma's arts and crafts fair.

As far as the cloud network goes, it seriously fucking rocks and it's well worth the money for time it saves doing optimizations. All that being said, I'm still begrudging programming mostly in MQL4 due to the fact that there are no decent brokers that have adopted MT5.
  • #17
  • Edited 4:11pm Nov 8, 2017 3:59pm | Edited 4:11pm
Quoting Nicholishen
{quote} I agree with braintheboss, and to expand further, it's not a grand conspiracy... MetaQuotes (MQ) has been in the game for a very long time. I remember starting with MT3, and back then they weren't trying to be a fully developed quant platform but rather they just wanted their own language for very simple trading activities, albeit a very crude one. As MT evolved, MQ constantly had to make compromises to their platform to appease the old code and user-base resulting in a less than ideal development framework. MT5 was a rather ambitious project...
MT5 and mql5 as whole pack is a BIG step backwards from the core concept which made MT4 so successful! (I can't believe there are people who do not understand this)
MT5 will NEVER replicate the success of MT4. Period!

It's a total overkill (in the wrong direction) and a perfect example for bad software engineering! (And I'm not talking about the long list of bugs!)
Coding with mql5 is pure pain even for experienced programmers! Everything is so over-complicated that it just makes no sense. I'm wondering who came up with all this nonsense?

Just to get BACK to the level of simplicity in mql4, you have to use all kinds of libraries, classes, and only god knows what else....

Only one look at how order management works in mt5 is enough to give you the hint that something is seriously off with this project! Even people who know nothing about programing can understand this!

Look this example:
Inserted Video
  • #18
  • Nov 8, 2017 4:14pm Nov 8, 2017 4:14pm
Quoting alphaomega
{quote} MT5 and mql5 as whole pack is a BIG step backwards from the core concept which made MT4 so successful! (I can't believe there are people how do not understand this) MT5 will NEVER replicate the success of MT4. Period! It's a total overkill (in the wrong direction) and a perfect example for bad software engineering! (And I'm not talking about the long list of bugs!) Coding with mql5 is pure pain even for experienced programmers! Everything is so over-complicated that it just makes no sense. I'm wondering who came up with all this nonsense?...
When you say "mql5 is pure pain even for experienced programmers", I strongly disagree because that is a purely subjective statement. I agree that the new way can seem convoluted and backwards at first, but it opens up the platform for more development possibilities and makes life so much easier when implementing complex strategies. Experienced OOP devs love the new framework (it took me a while) and now I wish I had access to all the classes from the MQL5 lib in MQL4. On the other-hand, if you're an old-school procedural C-style programmer, then yes, you're going to hate the hell out of it.
  • #19
  • Nov 8, 2017 7:48pm Nov 8, 2017 7:48pm
thank you for all for this points output. in general i think that mt4 is older and latest mt5 is best but when come to read all the posts from mladen, alphaomega, nicholishen, braintheboss, sakisf, hanover ..and atheer1 and erebus, pfisherman, ohlc and others... really opened the real strengh of mt4 and thank you all once again
Success is a Journey Not a Destination....... kind regards ramzam
  • #20
  • Edited Nov 9, 2017 4:41am Nov 8, 2017 9:59pm | Edited Nov 9, 2017 4:41am
Quoting JensItzig
That's for sure one reason. And now the big BUT. How many of these thousands of Indis, Scripts and EAs are worth to be migrated? How many are duplicates or can be replaced by standard indicators (if they would be more flexible)?
IMO indicators generally don't make profitable signal generators, but apparently I'm in the minority of amateur traders. The number of downloads in threads like this, and number of requests in threads like this (21,000+ posts; 9,000+ downloadable files, the first three alone have been downloaded 6,000 times each), highlights just how popular indicators are. I suspect that amateur traders tend to prefer indicator based systems and EAs, as they remove a lot of ambiguity and guesswork from trading (more here). Strength meters, dashboards (20,000 posts!), and information plotting indicators have also become very fashionable; and I doubt that MetaQuotes could provide indicators like this one. Amateurs have also become fairly pedantic about the appearance of their indicators, as a lot of the changes requested are largely cosmetic.
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