MT4 Signals – Useful Tips for Choosing

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We advise you to avoid signal providers who recommend working only with a specific broker, as you thus risk losing your deposit. Additionally, we recommend using RoboForex for trading with signal services, as the company has a great experience in this area and a built-in service for copying signals of trustworthy traders, which is more profitable and reliable.

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The foreign exchange (Forex) market provides plenty of opportunities for intelligent traders who are ready to put in the necessary work to earn a serious profit. However, one of the reasons many people lose money in forex trading is the large level of uncertainty — a lot of varied factors can influence the standing of any currency pair, and successful traders need the right information to navigate them and make smart choices.

This requires finding the right trading signals on your trading platform. And in this case, we’ll take a look at how you can best utilize MT4 signals to your advantage on the forex market.

All you need is a well-established, verified, trustworthy, and reliable forex signal provider.

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What are Forex Trading Signals

Before you can learn to use MT4 signals for trading, you need to learn what trading signals are in the first place. Basically, these are certain thresholds for various parameters — triggers for traders to take action on a certain position, and either sell or buy an asset. In this case, since we’re talking about the forex market, the asset is a currency.

Some signals are generated manually by people who use technical indicators to come up with informed decisions — but there are also automated signals, that are generated via complex mathematical algorithms. The latter usually use market actions on a large scale (generally global) and various economic indicators to produce an advisable action as the output.

In practice, most traders will use multiple different signals while trading on the forex market. The combination of various trading signals is called a forex signal system — a collection of analyses that a trader can use to decide whether to sell or buy a currency pair at a specific moment.

These trading signals are sometimes developed by individual traders for their personal use. However, in most cases, traders use platforms that provide trading signal systems — such as MetaTrader 4. On such platforms, the most successful traders that have devised and tested complex signals also provide them to other traders for a fee.

How MetaTrader Signals Work

Now that you’ve learned the basic definition of trading signals, the question is — what kind of signals can you find on MetaTrader 4 in practice? The most common type are indicator-based signals, which use different indexes to provide information.

For example, RSI (Relative Strength Index) is one of the most widely used indicators, and it’s frequently shown on charts before price events. It depicts momentum oscillations, calculating the speed by which price movements occur — and providing a 0-100 index as a measurement. So, when RSI is below 30 for a given currency pair, it’s probably oversold — while an RSI over 70 means it’s overbought.

Another effective signal that can help traders see “the big picture” when it comes to currency pairs is the Moving Averages (MA) signal. It’s designed to “flatten” the sharp swings that can be seen on a currency chart during any day trading period — which can often seem random or noisy. The MA signal is an essential tool in the belt of any successful trader — allowing them to figure out the current momentum or trend in more volatile markets.

The selection of signals available to you depends on what platform you’re using to trade. There are both free and paid forex signal providers. And while the free ones usually require that you register with their broker of choice to use their signals, the paid ones provide more complex features and tools for a fee.

When it comes to MT4, the main attraction is its excellent copy trading signals.

MT4 Copy Trading Signals

So, what exactly are copy trading signals? We’ve already mentioned that some traders develop their own signals or signal systems — and platforms like MT4 allow other people to copy these signals in exchange for a fee.

Basically, copy trading signals means following and abiding by signals generated by other traders — sometimes automatically. These features on platforms like MetaTrader 4 have given rise to an entire world of social trading — with plenty of trading communities and brokers launching proprietary platforms hosting their signals.

Apart from choosing signal providers on MT4, you can also adjust your trading parameters, and the system will automatically copy the trades that meet your requirements. You can also customize the amount of capital you want to commit to copy trading.

This system is incredibly useful for novice traders — it allows them to start investing real money and enter the market without requiring an intricate level of knowledge. As beginners learn, they start relying on their own knowledge, instinct, and analyses — but it’s useful to see how others trade and think at first.

On the other hand, this type of social trading has immense benefits for the signal providers as well. They can gain credence as successful managers in the forex community and make a career out of their work — and the subscription fees they get from satisfied users are an additional source of income as well.

Many investors use copy trading services as a steady source of passive income. Naturally, the probability of earning a profit by copying trades differs widely — depending on the level of capital the investor is ready to commit, as well as the trader’s acumen and skill. Risks are still just as high — you’re just stacking them against someone else’s judgment and knowledge. So, risk management rules are still gospel, even in copy trading.

How To Choose MT4 Signals Provider

In most cases, this kind of copy trading is an extremely simple process. You just go to the website of the platform you’ve chosen (in this case, MT4) and browse the signals provided by traders. When you’ve chosen the signal provider you want to follow, you just subscribe to that user — thereby gaining access to their transactions.

However, while subscribing to a trader’s signal is easy in practical terms — you still need to choose the right traders to follow. And that means looking at all the relevant information on them, resulting in an informed opinion.

You want to know the reliability of any signal provider — in other words, the risk accompanying their usual trading signals. It’s also important to see what kind of experience and reputation they have; you can surmise that from their activity time, current balance, number of subscribers, initial deposit, and of course, their overall profit.

The financial performance of the trader is your biggest indicator of their equality — especially their growth of funds chart. By comparing their average profit data with increments, you can see the curve and compare it to other signal providers as well.

There’s also a profitability chart, expressed as a ratio of the trader’s balance to their number of transactions. You can also compare this indicator with the average data from other traders. Also, you should look at the ratio of the trader’s capital to their balance sheet — and the daily drawdown. On MetaTrader 4, you can easily see statistics on a trader’s number of buy and sell orders, as well as profit and loss expressed in pips and currency.

However, before subscribing to any particular trader’s signals, you should definitely perform risk analytics for each of their strategies. You can do this with maximum loss and profit charts that plot the potential for every trade.

MT4 Copy Trading Example

Now you have all the theoretical basics necessary for using MT4 copy trading signals. But how do you utilize them in practice?

For starters, you will need three things:

  • An active MetaTrader 4 trading account

  • An active MQL5.com account

  • Funds deposited to your MQL5 account via e-wallet or bank card

If you’re not familiar with MQL5, it’s an object-oriented, high-level programming language that’s based on C++. And don’t worry, you won’t need to learn to code — you just need an account because all MT4 trading applications are written in MQL5.

It differs from other programming languages because it was created specifically for trading applications — a lot of its built-in functions handle trade management and technical analyses, allowing traders who want to create signals to do so without a lot of technical knowledge they’d otherwise need. Furthermore, you need active funds on your MQL5.com account because you’ll need them to pay subscription fees for those traders whose signals you’ll be copying.

Once you create an account and deposit funds, you’ll be able to add more trading signals or view your currently copied ones in the “My Subscriptions” section. There, you will see all of the strategies of the providers you subscribe to. All of the statistics you need to track regarding their trades are there.

For experienced traders that want to earn a passive income by providing their own trading signals to others, the “My Signals” section provides that option as well. Also, there’s a “Favorites” option for traders that you want to track, but you haven’t subscribed to yet. It’s always useful to see how well someone’s doing over a certain period of time before actually subscribing, so this is a neat option.

When it comes to subscription payments, you can pay from your MQL5.com balance, or you can directly pay using credit or debit cards, ePayments, Neteller, WebMoney, and PayPal. Once you’ve downloaded all the required files and completed your subscription process, you’ll be able to start copy trading.

However, while this is a passive process where you don’t have to make a lot of trading decisions — you still need to control your investment and monitor your performance. Configure the level at which copy signal trades will affect your account — like Take Profit and Stop Loss values, and similar parameters.

Also, when you begin trading, monitor the statistics on your current subscriptions to see the efficiency of individual trading signals — it’s important to know when to stop relying on a trader and search for a new one with more effective strategies.

MT4 Signals. Free Vs Paid

As we’ve mentioned above, providers of trade signals in the forex market either charge a subscription fee for their trading information — or they offer it for free.

We have to point out that, generally, free MT4 signals are far less reliable than the paid ones. The traders that offer them frequently have strategies that haven’t yet been tested in market conditions — if they were certain of their success, they’d be charging a fee.

On the other hand, a paid signal service can be provided by both companies, groups of analysts, or individuals. And while they’re more effective than free signals on average — this is by no means a guarantee of their success. Regardless of whether paid signals are generated through automated algorithms or manually, there is no 100% on any market — and currency pairs can be particularly volatile.

With that in mind, even when you’re “betting” on a proven signal provider with an immensely successful track record — you should still never deposit any money you’re not afraid to lose in its entirety and still walk away unscathed.

Should I Trust Forex Signals?

Everything has a trade-off — and forex signals are no different, with their fair share of ups and downs. At the end of the day, you’re right to ask yourself: should I trust signals, and are they worth it?

The trustworthiness of a signal definitely depends on its source — and apart from trader signals, there are also signals created by brokers to attract new traders. Some banks create signals as well, though these generally only provide information on long-term trends that isn’t as useful for day traders.

Some of these sources are more reliable and carry less risk — but the rewards you reap are smaller as well. It’s important to find that sweet spot between profitability and risk while selecting traders or other sources of forex signals.

Best MetaTrader Brokers in 2024

Considering all of the above — how do different brokers stack up from the perspective of MT4 signals? We’ll take a look at some of the heavy hitters below.

eToro

This is an interesting choice among brokers — but not one we’d necessarily recommend in terms of MT4 signals. The reason for that is simple: unlike most other brokers out there, eToro doesn’t support MT4 or MT5. They use their WebTrader and OpenBook — their own proprietary trading platforms.

On the one hand, this does provide a uniquely simplified and streamlined trading experience; eToro certainly has some of the easiest-to-use interfaces out there. However, bear in mind that going with eToro means it will be harder to switch to other brokers in the future, because you won’t be accustomed to MT4 and its signals — you’ll only be able to copy trade using the ones eToro provides you with. And considering most other brokers use MT4, this is quite a compromise to make.

AvaTrade

Not only does AvaTrade offer instant order execution just like eToro — but they also have a far wider range of choices when it comes to trading platforms and their signals. Firstly, yes, the broker does support MT4 — but they also use their own AVA Option and AvaTrader, as well as Mirror Trader, ZuluTrade, and MobileTrading.

Summary

Forex signals are an essential part of any trader’s toolset — they provide easily discernible and insightful information from various indicators of market performance. These signals can be provided by both brokers and other traders — and the latter often charge a subscription fee for their services.

However, once you pay that fee, you can dabble in copy trading as a passive income source, by copying the trades of your more experienced peers. Still, no-one is infallible — so controlling your copy trading performance and betting on the right people is incredibly important.

FAQs

Do forex signals actually work?

Forex signals definitely work — though the performance depends on the specific signals. Also, at the end of the day, a human mind must correctly interpret and analyze them; unless you’re copy trading.

Can you get rich off forex signals?

If you make smart investments, slowly amass your capital without being greedy or hasty, and follow the correct signals — the answer is an absolute yes.

Can I get free forex signals?

Yes, but these are generally less reliable.

Why are Forex signals bad?

If you use the wrong signals, you stand to lose money.

Team that worked on the article

Thomas Wettermann
Contributor

Thomas Wettermann is an experienced writer and a contributor to the Traders Union website. Over the last 30 years, he has written posts, articles, tutorials, and publications on several different high tech, health, and financial technologies, including FinTech, Forex trading, cryptocurrencies, metaverses, blockchain, NFTs and more. He is also an active Discord and Crypto Twitter user and content producer.

Knows about
patents, finance, crypto

Experience
Practicing as a registered US patent attorney for almost thirty years, Thomas has written and obtained hundreds of US and International patents for clients having varying technologies. He offers a unique BSEE, MBA, and JD perspective on financial, technical, legal, and crypto issues.

Over the last 30 years, Thomas has written posts, articles, and publications on several different high-tech, health, and financial technologies. He is an active Discord and Crypto Twitter user and content producer. He has drafted and edited crypto technical documents including articles, blog posts, whitepapers, patent applications, legal briefs, technical memoranda, opinions, transfer agreements, expert technical reports, and other complex technical documents. Many of his consulting engagements have involved blockchain projects. He has also authored at least 40+ crypto posts and educational pieces.

Education
DePaul University College of Law
Doctor of Law
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Master of Business Administration (MBA), International Business

Olga Shendetskaya
Author and editor at Traders Union

Olga Shendetskaya has been a part of the Traders Union team as an author, editor and proofreader since 2017. Since 2020, Shendetskaya has been the assistant chief editor of the website of Traders Union, an international association of traders. She has over 10 years of experience of working with economic and financial texts. In the period of 2017-2020, Olga has worked as a journalist and editor of laftNews news agency, economic and financial news sections. At the moment, Olga is a part of the team of top industry experts involved in creation of educational articles in finance and investment, overseeing their writing and publication on the Traders Union website.

Olga has extensive experience in writing and editing articles about the specifics of working in the Forex market, cryptocurrency market, stock exchanges and also in the segment of financial investment in general. This level of expertise allows Olga to create unique and comprehensive articles, describing complex investment mechanisms in a simple and accessible way for traders of any level.

Olga’s motto: Do well and you’ll be well!

Mirjan Hipolito
Cryptocurrency and stock expert

Mirjan Hipolito is a journalist and news editor at Traders Union. She is an expert crypto writer with five years of experience in the financial markets. Her specialties are daily market news, price predictions, and Initial Coin Offerings (ICO). Mirjan is a cryptocurrency and stock trader. This deep understanding of the finance sector allows her to create informative and engaging content that helps readers easily navigate the complexities of the crypto world.