mt4 or mt5 for fx portfolio?

As i develop as an algo trader im wondering if there is an advantage to trade fx strategies on mt4 or mt5 or vice versa? i understand mt5 has the advange of futures but is there any other difference?

thanks in advance

its not so easy:

MT4 is and old 32bit platform, but its hard tested for years and its working very good for me, making backtests by MT4 taking very long time, because it could use only 1 core. SOme brokers are ending with MT4 and will continue only in MT5

MT5 is modern 64bit platform, backtesting is fast, you can trade more TFs, like H2 without anything else needed – but RAM consumption is much much higher if i compare MT4 vs MT5

MT5 and futures – its not that simple, i know only 1 broker with futures in MT5, and thats AMP … nothing more

if i compare the same strats traded in MT4 and MT5 on the same broker – i can see some not so small differences

Thanks Hankeys

I can see you have had a similar thought at somepoint and even gone to test it out.

Assuming they are the same date range for trade history i would look at those and think they are different strategies. im amazed of the difference!  Im wondering now if i can diversify further by building a portfolio of the same  but to trade on mt5 as i do on mt4?

Ah yes i forget mt5 gives you different time frames. as i type im thinking if i can build for 8 hr time frames?

This is one of your more helpful forum responses, Hankeys!  Thanks a lot for sharing this as it is very insightful.

It’s quite worrisome to see the same strategy performing so differently in MT4 vs MT5. How complex is the strategy?

I’m not interested in getting a copy of the strategy, but it would be *very* helpful to this community to know which signals / indicators might be subject to performance deltas between the 2.

There’s no point to compare the same strategy generated with MT4 on MT5 and viceversa. The building Engines on SQX are different. If you Build a strategy based on Engine MT4 and try to save it on MQL5 you’ll receive a Warning from SQX because the strategy wasn’t generated for MT5. Some nuances that I don’t know and to be honest I don’t care will make the strategies work differently on both platforms. In other words, those strategies generated for MT4 shouldn’t be recicled on MT5 unless you pass all your Robustness process again with the MT5 Engine.

The only comparison you should really care is between the SQX backtest and Live.

MT4 must be the same as MT5 hedged mode, there is no difference in SQX at all and backtests and what ever robustnes test you made will be the same

truth is only 1 – backtest will always be only a backtest and even on demo and more on real accounts the differences will be in the trading platform…no backtest will be 100% accurate, its more about the EQ direction…sometime your trade will be taken sometimes not, every pip counts

i also traded the same portfolio with the same VPS with the same broker – and differences could be also in there

so for me has some difference no big deal – but for now i am using only MT4 platform, because i trade it from SQ3 from 2016 and i have tested in SQX for many times and on many strats and i know, that MT4 trading is very similar.

But question is – is really MT5 code finetuned as the MQL4? i dont know – and from the comparation made i am getting bigger differences that i will like…so i stick with MT4 because i like it and it consumes few RAM for me in trading mode

about the TFs in MT5 – open the platform and you can see what TFs are implemented and you most probably dont need anything like offline charts – the same for range or renko bars and they are implemented right by MT5 platform – so trading them must be easy – but i never tried it for now

and my strategies are i think very basic – 1 or max 2 entry conditions, stop ones, SL required, sometimes TP, trailing, exit bars – nothing special…no multimarket, no multiTF

regarding MT4 vs MT5, i heard an information from a broker call center technician who said that, opposed to MT4, the MT5 has the advantage that there is no optimizing (deleting) of account history

but unfortunately, i cant verify this information, that on MT5 you have the guarantee of account history

i came across this issue when i learned that there are brokers who in order to save storage space on their servers, they simply delete the account history even on a monthly basis, on real and demo accounts on active (not abandoned) accounts. This makes the work much harder to save and keep the track of trades on dozens of strategies

regarding what Enric said, there is something there that doesnt make sense because you generate the strategy and at the end, you have the option of exporting either as an MT4 or an MT5 strategy

i forgot to mention that i had to choose, either to convert all my strategies from MT4 to MT5, or to change the current broker, Justforex, so i decided to change the broker and now i am at XM

about the history – i am using 7 brokers and trade only MT4 platform and i have never problems with history, i have history for years and those brokers never deleted any history

i know only about one broker which are deleting the history monthly and thats Robomarkets but i dont trade with them – maybe this is used only on cent accounts

so its more about broker behavior, not MT4 platform itself

MT4 vs MT5 – sure that we need to have MQL4 or MQL5 files, because MQL language differes between v. 4 and 5. Its the same that we have also in SQX the engine “MT4” and “MT5” and there 2 versions – netted and hedged…but between MT4 and MT5 hedged i dont see any difference, so the trading should be very similar

hankeys wrote:

i know only about one broker which are deleting the history monthly and thats Robomarkets

there are several confirmed (i received email from support), most of them registered in exotic countries

some of them from which i received confirmation that they delete history on regular basis: Justforex, Instaforex, Roboforex, Oanda, FXTM (only on MT4), Teletrade