How to Use Expert Advisor in MT4

Using Expert Advisors (a.k.a. Forex robots) in the MT4 trading terminal has gained popularity as an easy and efficient method of trading the lucrative forex market day and night without human presence. When you start using robust trading robots the right way you’ll never think of manual trading again. In this article, I’ll explain how easy it is to use Expert Advisors in any MetaTrader account.

 

What is Expert Advisor?

As the name suggests, an expert advisor or a robot is a piece of software installed in the trading platform and used for advising traders on the best trade opportunities.

Essentially, an expert advisor will automatically watch for market movements and execute trades without your direct intervention.

It just follows a set of programmed rules based on your preferred trading strategy.

Unlike manual trading, which necessitates you to glue yourself in front of a computer screen looking for perfect trade opportunities, a trading robot will keep an eye on the market without requiring your physical presence—giving you the opportunity to pursue other interests.

Therefore, if you’d like to execute trades during a particular trading session but your time zone is unfavorable, you could greatly benefit from expert advisors.

More so, automated trading systems are not vulnerable to emotions. Just like other humans, forex traders are often grappled with various negative emotions, which can hamper their sound decision making.

On the other hand, in the world of forex robots, emotional decision making is not present.

The robots are programmed to stick to certain criteria of commands and make appropriate trade decisions, without worrying, feeling painful, or excessively excited.

Another benefit of expert advisors is that they are capable of making quick market decisions.

Whereas humans usually take a few seconds or longer to interpret what is taking place in the market, expert advisors normally react instantly to changes taking place in the market—without second-guessing.

If you are looking for trading on 5-minute, 30-minute charts or any other time frame, a forex robot is a great help.

Forex traders usually think that creating robots is a very complicated process but actually, these days it became a simple task with the newly available software and tools.

Recommended video: How to Create Profitable Trading Strategies Fast Using This Proven 3-Step Process

How To Use Expert Advisor In MT4

How to use a forex robot in MT4 is a simple process.

Importantly, before creating an EA, you need to chose which currency pair or instrument you want to use and then set some basic trading strategy parameters like “stop loss” and “take profit”. Then, if you are creating your robot manually you’ll need to have clear logical trading rules in place for entry and exit.

For example, if your strategy relies on assessing the behavior of certain technical indicators, you can code that strategy, and earn profits from automated trading.

If you program an EA without having a clear understanding of your trading strategy, you could be just creating a money-eating machine.

With a solid strategy to be ingrained into a robot, making profits from the lucrative forex market will be a lot easier.

Furthermore, you can sharpen your trading strategy by trying it out under simulated forex trading conditions.

This way, you can ascertain whether it can be profitable risk-free before launching it for live trading.

Neglecting to test your strategy on a demo account may lead to costly mistakes, especially if you fail to make the appropriate adjustments beforehand.

If you lack sufficient programming skills you can hire a programmer to do the work for you.

Better still, you can use a Forex EA generator, which allows you to create real money-making robots without requiring any programming or other technical skills.

To use the Expert Advisor for MT4, download it, then, install it on your MT4 trading platform. This process is easy and hassle-free and explained below.

Remember that in case you experience any problem during the installation process, always double-check the EA instructions manual to find the problem’s source.

If you can’t still find the solution, you can contact the vendor’s technical support for further assistance.

Importantly, to ensure you use the expert advisor well in the trading platform, you can test its performance using the Strategy tester, which is a feature inbuilt in MT4.

We are going to talk more about some of the ways of how to use expert advisor MetaTrader 4 in the subsequent sections.

Recommended read: How Forex robot works on MT4

How To Install Expert Advisor In MT4

Installing an expert advisor in MT4 is very easy, and anyone can do it, regardless of whether it’s your first-day trading or you’ve spent years in the forex market.

After downloading and saving the EA on your computer,  select and copy it (CTRL+C). You’ll need to add (paste) the EA files in the “Experts’ folder found in platform’s program files.

On your trading platform, click on the “File” tab located on the top navigation menu. Next, click on the “Open Data Folder” found in the drop-down menu.

Next, in the Data Folder, double-click on the “MQL4” folder followed by the “Experts” folder.

While the Experts folder is still open, paste the EA files you’d copied initially there.

Thereafter, to ensure the expert advisor is available for installation on the chart, you can close and open your MT4 terminal once again or do a “Refresh” in the “Navigator” window.

Then, if you click on the “Plus” sign found under the “Navigator” section on the left side of your MT4 terminal, you’ll find the expert advisor already available.

To install the robot on the chart, drag and drop it onto any chart on the platform.

For instance, if the robot is designed to work well on the EUR/USD chart on a 4-hour timeframe, drag and drop it on that chart.

Attaching an EA to its intended chart ensures its optimal performance under the specific trading conditions.

Before attaching the EA on the chart, you’ll be prompted with a settings window where you can set essential parameters, such as lot size and stop loss levels for your forex trading robot.

Thereafter, the trading robot will be ready for use on the MetaTrader.

If everything went well during the installation process, you’ll see the expert advisor on the top right-hand corner of the trading terminal.

If it gives a smiling face, it suggests that the EA is ready for trading.

On the other hand, if it gives a sad face, it means you need to make more adjustments in the settings to ensure the robot works properly.

Forex Robot Settings

If the robot is not working (showing a sad face), it probably means that you need to adjust some of its settings.

It’s important to note that each robot has its own unique parameters, which you can set according to its instructions manual.

Nonetheless, the parameters common in every robot include lot size, stop loss level, and take profit level.

You can adjust any of these settings to meet your trading preferences and profit goals.

If the robot is already running on the platform, you can adjust the settings by hitting F7 on the keyboard, which will open the EA inputs settings window.

You can also make the adjustments before the robot has started running.

The most important options that have to be enabled before attaching any EA to the chart are found in the “Options” window available from the top “Tools” menu. Open the “Expert Advisors” tab, adjust the settings to allow for automated trading on the MT4 platform and select “Allow DLL import” (this one is not usually required but for some robots, it is mandatory to enable this, otherwise they will not work).

Better still, you can simply activate the “Autotrading” button located on the top of the MT4 terminal.

Once it’s activated for live trading, it will show a green color.

Moreover, if a window pops up displaying your forex robot’s settings, ensure the settings are checked. Important here is that the “Allow live trading” and “Allow DLL imports” are enabled.

Thereafter, you can click “Ok”.

How To Download Expert Advisor On MT4

Downloading an expert advisor from a vendor’s website and installing it on the MT4 platform is usually a quick and simple process.

Even though the process may differ from one vendor to another, it normally follows the same procedure for downloading any file from the Internet.

After clicking the download button and following the stipulated instructions, you’ll just need to wait a few seconds before the robot is saved on your computer.

For example, the MQL4 market contains hundreds of expert advisors you can download for free and use for automatically profiting from the lucrative forex market.

On the website’s “Experts Advisors” section, you can find various applications programmed using various strategies.

Whether you are looking for a simple expert advisor for free download or a complicated robot that can fully automate your trading decisions, the MQL4 market has you covered.

On the website’s experts section, you can search for an EA that best meets your preferred trading criteria.

Remember to check the reviews and comments of other traders before paying and downloading a trading robot.

Once you’ve identified an expert advisor, you can click the “free demo” button to try its performance or click the purchase button to buy it.

If you click the “free demo” button, a pop-up window will appear requiring you to confirm whether you’ve installed the MT4 platform or not.

If you click on “Yes, I’ve MetaTrader 4”, you’ll be directed to your MT4 platform where you can decide to “test” the forex robot or “rent” it.

How To Activate Expert Advisor In MT4

If you want to use an expert advisor for free, you will not require any activation. However, if you’ve purchased an EA, an activation key is usually provided which you can use to unlock the robot for trading.

If you’ve been provided with a license key, you’ll need to enter it in the EA inputs section before it can be activated for trading.

Vendors usually provide different kinds of licenses; some can give a key to be used for a specific period of time like one year while others can give one permanent key.

For example, if you want to use the LTC trade copier EA, you’ll need to provide a license key, as indicated below.

Another type of activation is when you download an EA from the MQL4 market.

As illustrated in the previous section, you can download an EA from the MQL4 market and use it for trading inside the MT4 platform.

If you click on the “rent” button and provide the necessary login details, you’ll be directed to a place where you can provide the EA’s license key before it’s activated for trading.

How To Make Forex Robot Software

Any expert advisor for MetaTrader 4 can be made using different ways, including programming, EA builders, or EA generators.

Programming an EA requires expertise in either the MetaQuotes Language 4 (MQL4) or the MetaQuotes Language 5 (MQL5), besides knowledge of other technical skills.

Programming an EA takes a lot of time and most people do not like to learn how to code.

However, a forex EA generator gives you the opportunity to make real money-making EAs without requiring any programming skills.

You’ll just need to input some parameters for the strategy in the online-based tool, and the rest will be completed for you.

EA builders are also becoming popular because traders can create great expert advisors without cracking their heads with difficult lines of code. But with EA builder you’ll still need to build logical trading rules for entry and exit and there are billions of variations where most of them do not work. So chances that you’ll put profitable logical rules in place with EA builder is almost zero.

But with the Expert Advisor generator (i.e. Forex Robot Factory) making a forex robot software is easy and quick.

Conclusion

Using an expert advisor in MT4 is easy and can assist you to benefit from automated trading.

After downloading the forex robot software from a vendor’s website, you just need to set it up on the trading platform and if it has a profitable trading strategy coded inside then you will make profits from Forex without trading yourself.

Besides saving you from gluing yourself on the computer screen the whole day, you’ll avoid emotional trading and gain the ability to make profits round-the-clock from the market.