Trading Glossary: MetaTrader 4 Terms You’ll Actually See on Screen

Every trading platform comes with its own vocabulary, and MetaTrader 4—despite being over two decades old—still speaks a language that can trip up beginners. Open the platform for the first time, and you’re greeted with Market Watch, Terminal, Navigator, and a stream of numbers that don’t immediately explain themselves. The terms aren’t complicated once you know them, but they’re also not obvious.

This glossary focuses on the MT4 terms you’ll see day-to-day, defined in plain language and grouped by what they actually do. These definitions are cross-checked against how the platform labels things, so what you read here should match what you see on screen .

Price and Quote Terms

When you look at a price in MT4, you’re always looking at two numbers side by side. That’s the bid and the ask.

Bid — the price at which you can sell the base currency. Always the lower of the two quoted prices.

Ask (offer) — the price at which you can buy the base currency. Always the higher of the two.

Spread — the difference between ask and bid. This is your entry cost. In MT4, the spread is displayed in the Market Watch window alongside each instrument. A narrow spread means less cost to enter a trade; a wide spread means more.

Currency pair — two currencies quoted against each other. In EURUSD, EUR is the base and USD is the quote. The price tells you how many US dollars one euro buys.

Pip — the standard unit of price movement. For most pairs, that’s 0.0001. For JPY pairs, it’s 0.01. If EURUSD moves from 1.0850 to 1.0862, that’s 12 pips.

Pipette (point) — one tenth of a pip, the fifth decimal on most quotes. MT4 displays this by default.

These price terms show up constantly in the Market Watch window, which is the first thing many traders look at. Hovering over an instrument in that window gives you the current quote—but if you want to see it from the system tray without opening MT4, tools like Camovia Tray display that same quote data from your terminal on hover. The data comes directly from your local MT4 instance, so it reflects exactly what you’d see in the platform.

Position and Size Terms

Once you’re looking at prices, the next question is: how much are you actually trading?

Lot — the standard position unit in MT4: 100,000 units of the base currency. A mini lot is 10,000 units (0.1 lots). A micro lot is 1,000 units (0.01 lots). In MT4, you specify lot size in the New Order window.

Leverage — a multiplier that lets you control a larger position with less capital. At 1:100 leverage, $100 in margin controls a $10,000 position. Leverage amplifies both gains and losses equally.

Margin — the deposit your broker reserves to hold a position open. At 1:100 leverage, margin is 1% of the position value. MT4 shows your used margin, free margin, and margin level in the Terminal window’s Trade tab.

Free margin — equity minus used margin. What’s available for new positions.

Long position — buying first, expecting the price to rise. In MT4, this shows as “Buy” in the Trade tab.

Short position — selling first, expecting the price to fall. Shows as “Sell” in the Trade tab.

Position — an open trade with a direction, size, and entry price. Every open position appears as a row in MT4’s Trade tab with these fields: ticket number, time, type, size, symbol, price, S/L, T/P, and current profit .

Camovia Tray displays these same position details in a floating window: which instrument, direction, lot size, entry price, and current profit. Everything stays on your local machine—the data is read from your terminal and isn’t uploaded anywhere. If you manage multiple positions, having that overview in the system tray can reduce the need to constantly bring MT4 to the foreground.

Order Types

MT4 gives you several ways to tell the platform when and how to enter a trade.

Market order — buy or sell at the current price. Execution results in an open position immediately. In MT4’s New Order window, this is the default option.

Pending order — an instruction to open a position at a predefined price in the future, provided the quote reaches that level . There are four types:

• Buy Limit — buy at a price lower than the current ask. Used when you expect the price to fall and then rise.
• Buy Stop — buy at a price higher than the current ask. Used when you expect the price to keep rising.
• Sell Limit — sell at a price higher than the current bid. Used when you expect the price to rise and then fall.
• Sell Stop — sell at a price lower than the current bid. Used when you expect the price to keep falling.

Stop Loss — an order that closes a position when the price moves against you by a set amount. In MT4, this is set in the New Order window when you open a trade, or modified later by right-clicking the position and selecting Modify or Delete Order.

Take Profit — an order that closes a position when the price moves in your favor by a set amount. Set the same way as a Stop Loss.

Trailing Stop — a Stop Loss that follows the price as it moves in your favor. MT4 lets you set this from the Trade tab’s context menu. If the price moves up, the trailing stop moves up with it; if it pulls back by a set number of pips, the position closes.

Pending orders and Stop Loss/Take Profit levels are where MT4’s order management gets interesting. If you use these regularly, you can set up your trades and step away from the screen. For times when you still want to keep an eye on your open positions without having MT4 open on the desktop, Camovia Tray’s position list can show you what’s still running.

Trade Management Terms

The Terminal window in MT4 (shortcut: Ctrl+T) is where you manage everything.

Trade tab — shows open positions, pending orders, account balance, and the profit/loss of open positions. Each row represents either an open position or a pending order that hasn’t triggered yet .

One-click trading — a feature that lets you open trades with a single click, bypassing the confirmation window. Useful in fast-moving markets. In MT4, this is toggled on the toolbar.

Close Order — closing an open position. In MT4, right-click the position in the Trade tab and select Close Order. The platform then shows a confirmation window with the current price and a Close button.

Modify Order — changing the Stop Loss or Take Profit of an open position. Right-click the position, select Modify or Delete Order, and enter new levels.

MT4 gives you full control over closing and modifying trades, but that control is only accessible when the platform is open. If you’re working with multiple screens or want to check on positions without bringing MT4 to the front, being able to view and close positions from the system tray can be a convenience. Camovia Tray reads the same position data your terminal has, displays it in a compact view, and allows closing via a two-step confirmation—view the position, tap Close, then confirm.

Technical Indicators

MT4 includes 30 built-in technical indicators, plus the ability to create custom ones using MQL4.

Moving Average (MA) — averages a range of prices to show trend direction. Slope indicates the trend; crossovers can signal reversals.

RSI (Relative Strength Index) — an oscillator that measures overbought and oversold conditions. Below 30 is oversold, above 70 is overbought .

MACD — shows the relationship between two moving averages. Used for trend confirmation and momentum.

Bollinger Bands — volatility bands that widen and narrow based on price movement. Prices touching the upper band suggest overbought conditions; touching the lower band suggests oversold.

Ichimoku — a comprehensive indicator that shows support, resistance, and trend direction on a single chart.

Bill Williams indicators — a suite including Alligator, Awesome Oscillator, and Fractals. MT4 has a dedicated menu for these .

Indicators are useful for analysis, but they’re also part of what makes MT4 feel crowded. Some traders prefer to run their analysis, set their orders, then keep an eye on positions and prices without the full platform interface. That’s where keeping a lightweight view of key data—like current quotes and open positions—can help.

Expert Advisors (EAs)

Expert Advisor (EA) — an automated trading program coded in MQL4. It runs in MT4 and executes trades based on predefined rules without manual intervention .

Strategy Tester — the tool in MT4 that lets you backtest EAs using historical data. It’s single-threaded in MT4 (unlike MT5’s multi-threaded version).

MQL4 — MetaQuotes Language 4, the programming language used to write EAs and custom indicators for MT4.

EAs are powerful, but they also run inside MT4. If you’re testing an EA and want to monitor its performance without keeping MT4 on screen, having a secondary view of open positions can be useful without touching the automation itself.

Account and Risk Terms

Equity — your account balance plus or minus floating profit and loss on open positions. This fluctuates with price changes in real time .

Balance — the amount you would have if all open positions were closed at the current price. In MT4, balance is shown separately from equity in the Trade tab.

Free margin — the amount of equity not tied up as margin. If free margin hits zero, you may receive a margin call, and MT4 will start closing positions to protect the account.

Leverage setting — configurable per account, typically from 1:1 to 1:500 or higher. Higher leverage means more exposure for the same margin, and higher risk . In MT4, your leverage is shown in the Navigator tab under Accounts—hover over your account number to see it.

Hedging — opening a position in the opposite direction on the same instrument. MT4 supports hedging; MT5 does not (it uses a netting system) .

These account terms are all visible in MT4’s interface, but seeing them requires opening the platform. If you want to check free margin or equity while working in another application, you’d normally switch windows. For traders who run MT4 in the background, having a tray-based view of positions—which directly affects account equity—can reduce that context-switching.

Final Note on MT4 Terminology

MT4’s vocabulary hasn’t changed much in twenty years, and that consistency is part of why traders stick with it. The terms defined above are what you’ll see in the interface: bid, ask, spread, lot, margin, equity—they all appear in the Market Watch and Terminal windows exactly as described.

The challenge with MT4 isn’t that the terms are hard. It’s that the platform demands to be open to see them. For traders who prefer a minimalist workflow, third-party tools like Camovia Tray can supplement the platform by providing live quote data and open position views directly from the system tray—using the same data your MT4 terminal has, read locally and displayed without uploading anything to the cloud. It doesn’t replace MT4’s capabilities; it makes them more accessible when the platform itself is tucked away.