The incredible resilience of MT4 vs MT5.

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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.


MT4MT5Trends


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:

  • 6 types of pending orders (vs 4 in MT4)

  • Additional Chart time frame (M2, MI3, MI..)

  • Built-in economic calendar

  • 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
 
MT4 vs MT5 
https://www.mql5.com/en/forum/9950/page80#comment_2906486    
https://www.mql5.com/en/forum/167691  
https://www.mql5.com/ru/forum/204406 (in Russian)
How to Start with Metatrader 5
How to Start with Metatrader 5
  • 2016.10.17
  • www.mql5.com
I decided to create this thread to help to myself and to the others to start with Metatrader 5...
 

Forum on trading, automated trading systems and testing trading strategies

Why is it better MT5 than MT4?? Does it have fewer limitations ???

Jose Francisco Casado Fernandez, 2017.01.21 14:29

Well, due to the conversation of this thread, I have considered it opportune to open a new one to expose the pros and cons of MT4 versus MT5, and why I consider MT5 to be better.

Basically, MT5 has many more interesting features that help in trading, and MT4 has too many limitations in my opinion.

Let's cite some of them below.

     

  • MT5 is faster than MT4. It is a 64-bit, multi-threaded platform. MT4 is a 32-bit, mono-threaded platform with a 2 Gb (or 4 Gb memory limit if you use it on a 64-bit operating system, in which case a 32-bit system is emulated, which is not optimum). It is important, especially to do backtesting, since if your historical data file exceeds this limit (which happens especially if you use tick data), you have to split this file into several parts and do an individual backtest of each part. If you use tick data usually that memory limit is exceeded with a history of 2 years or so, but can also be exceeded even if you use standard M1 bar data.
  • MT5 is a Multi-Market platform, which means that you can trade in both
    • Centralized Markets (Stock Exchanges, Futures markets, etc.) where you can trade stocks, indices, commodities, futures on all of them, etc,  and 
    • Non-Centralized Markets, like Forex and other OTC markets.

In MT4 you can only trade in OTC markets (mainly Forex). If you trade other assets through MT4, these are CFDs, which are issued by OTC brokers for a kind of domestic market only for their customers, so they act as market makers in these assets (they make you the counterpart).

  • Due to this, in MT5 it is possible to get real volume traded data, and not only tick volume data. In MT4 it's not possible. The tick volume means the number of price changes that have occurred in the course of the bar. Nothing else. You do not know the real volume (contracts, or lots) that has been traded.
  • In MT5 you can download and consult ticks history from your broker. In MT4 you can't, you only can save tick data by yourself (with the help of some tool), but it has many limitations. You must have platform turned on 24 hours a day, and still you'll NEVER keep all the ticks, for many reasons.

Why is this important ??? It's a very easy thing. There are many traders who use tools like Market Profile, Delta Volume, etc., etc.

Well, in MT4 you can never know what exactly was the most traded price or cluster in the selected range. You have to make an approximation / estimation using only M1 bars. For example, if you are in M15 timefame you would have to analyze the 15 M1 bars in that section, see their maximum and minimum prices and the tick volume of each one of them and assign that volume in equal parts (or use the criterion that you want) to each of the prices or clusters between the maximum and minimum prices of that M1 bar. And so, try to calculate APPROXIMATELY, how much could be traded at each price. The real data you never know, you have to estimate it.

That is why in MT4 these types of tools are not very useful. There are many people who use them without knowing all these things, and believe that they offer you the real POC / VWAP / Profile, levels. But it's not like that. In MT4 I do not recommend using these tools.


  • In MT5 you have access to the tape (Times & Sales), so you can create Order Flow, Cumulative Delta, etc. indicators. In MT4 you have not.
  • In MT5 you can backtesting robots with the closest possible conditions to the real market natively  (real tick data, real variable spreads, lag, slippage, etc). In MT4 you can't natively. You only can if you pay for a third-party software. If so, you also have to download history data from a few sources (there are many few, almost everyone uses the same source), transform it to MT4 format and open the platform through this third-party software in order to patch MT4 behavior. You take many hours to complete this process, and you have to repeat it every time you want to incorporate new data.
    We have all seen hundreds of robots that obtained spectacular results in backtesting, but when operating in real account the results were very bad. This is mainly because they were made with conditions that had nothing to do with real market conditions.
  • In MT5 you can backtesting Multi-Symbol strategies natively. In MT4 you can't.
  • In MT5 is not possible to import your own historical data.  In MT4 it's possible.
    Really, how many tick data sources do you have available in MT4 to import ???, Dukascopy and Integral / Pepperstone ???. Just the two of them mostly, right? .
    Almost everyone uses Dukascopy data, and almost nobody has the real tick data of their broker, does it matter so much ??? Who has the real tick data of their broker ??.
    For me it is not very important because in MT5 if you have the data of your broker. Although you can not import those of Dukascopy.

    Is everyone a Dukascopy customer ??? Or does everyone want their own broker's data ?? "

    I think that almost everyone wants their broker's data and not those of Dukascopy. In MT5 you can have the tick data of your broker and you do not have to import those of Dukascopy.

    If you are a client of FxPro, ActivTrades or RoboForex, what do you want the Dukascopy tick data for ???. I'll tell you, that's because in MT4 you did not have tick data, so if you wanted tick data it was only possible if you imported Dukascopy data, but in MT5 there is no need for Dukascopy data, since you can Have the tick data of your broker.

    Therefore, in my opinion, it is not a relevant feature in MT5.

  • In MT5 you can't create offline charts. In MT4 you can. In my opinion this is the most important thing (perhaps the only) that MT5 lacks.


This is just a few limitations from all the ones MT4 has.

To be continue.


Regards.




 
 

Forum on trading, automated trading systems and testing trading strategies

Asynchronous requests to the server

Renat Fatkhullin, 2016.09.25 20:01

Yes, in MQL4 it has long been available to 8 simultaneous trade orders of the experts. And tt will not be decreased.

It is possible to provide 100-200 trade transactions in the second from 8 parallel experts Under ideal conditions on MT4.

The MT5 even from one expert synchronously and consistently without much straining can make 1000 sales transactions per second. If multiple robots, several thousand transactions per second. If asynchronous methods, it is also several thousand per second.

Here is an example from 1000 successive transactions in 1 second on the MetaTrader 5 server MetaQuotes-Demo:


The code is taken from the article Comparison of MQL5 and QLUA - why trading in MQL5 to 28 times faster?



 
PipsFisherman:

...

And you, why are you still on MT4?


PipsFisherman



Forum on trading, automated trading systems and testing trading strategies

Why is it better MT5 than MT4?? Does it have fewer limitations ???

Alain Verleyen, 2017.01.22 12:56

Everyone is free to have an opinion and to express it, but facts and data are more valuable. Someone previously said that MT5 is slower than MT4, that's an opinion. An opinion so obviously contrary to the facts that it's just laughable and not worth to discuss it. 

The problem start when someone try to present his opinion as the final truth, to present an opinion as it was a fact. And it happens often, sometimes so often that nobody takes care and don't even read hundred time repeated opinion presented as a law. I will never agree with that and I will not let develop such behavior while I am moderator.


 
MQL5 vs QLUA - Why trading operations in MQL5 are up to 28 times faster? - the article  
 
The Video from MQ: demonstration of the calculations on the GPU in MQL5 code and the graphics capabilities of the terminal
 
MQL5 speed test (compare with MQL4 and C++)
https://www.mql5.com/ru/forum/217992#comment_5943518 (in Russian)
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