CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 75.00% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
Latency or delays in execution can impact profitability and get in the way of meeting trading goals. The global financial markets can move within milliseconds and trade setup needs to keep pace. Consider a scenario where you make a trading decision based on the current currency exchange rates. You click to open a buy or sell position, but the instruction reaches the server after a few seconds. The price would have moved by then. The trade may get executed at a different price, known as slippage, or get cancelled. Delayed order filling becomes either a missed opportunity or one that is not optimally capitalised.
Lightning-fast execution is especially important for high-frequency trading, scalping, and arbitrage trading. Apart from ensuring you have good internet bandwidth and a robust device, there are a few things you can do to speed up the trading platform. That is a great starting point, in fact, an important one.
Your system will always give you signs that it is overloaded. Screen freezes, lagging charts, delayed response when you click your mouse, and slow execution of orders are some of these signs. Many factors affect the performance, like using multiple strategies, switching between demo and live trading, and having multiple accounts. Here are some ways to increase the speed of MT4.
The first step to optimise MT4 trading performance is to reduce the number of maximum bars displayed. It relieves the graphic card from rendering and refreshing each of them. A reduction in processing load almost instantly improves response time and reduces screen freeze events. Besides, how many screens can you actually monitor at a time? Even the human brain has an upper limit, far smaller than that of a computer!
Steps to reduce bars:
To test the setting for improvement, simply reduce the values to 50% and observe the difference. You can always pick a different number that suits your trading strategy.
RAM is where all the actively executing programs are placed in a computer. Optimising it is extremely helpful in improving overall system performance. To start with it, deactivate all the non-required background processes or features. You can disable features like Email, Events Tabs, and Publisher in MT4. Most traders don’t even use these often. You can also disable News.
In the Tools menu
In the Market Watch window
Finally, make sure to restart the MT4 application from time to time to clear up the cache and maintain low memory usage.
MT4 allows traders to create multiple profiles. If you are juggling between markets during different timings as per your trading schedule, create separate profiles with preferences for each session. It saves time as optimised profiles load faster.
Here’s how you do it:
Set your preferences for a particular profile. For instance, select preferred forex pairs and charts for forex trading during London trading hours.
Repeat the above steps for other profiles, like say gold trading in New York trading hours.
To open a profile for a trading session, follow these steps:
Default plugin indicators for MT4 and the MT4 Supreme Edition are optimised. However, custom indicators are not. They could be badly coded or inadequately tested and may adversely affect memory and processor usage. This may seem time-consuming but you need to check each one to identify the ones slowing MT4 and delete them.
To prevent from investing this time, use custom indicators created and tested by recognised and verified sources.
Increasing the speed of the MT4 Strategy Tester is also essential to improving your overall trading experience.
For this, ensure the following:
A VPS can dramatically improve system trading performance in case your internet bandwidth or ISP’s speed is hindering your trading. It is easy to set up and works seamlessly. These servers dedicate all their resources to trading and no other functions are performed. The only limiting factor is the resource capacity of the chosen server. So, choose one that meets your trading needs.
Finally, considering the unique specifications of your device may help improve your trading speed further.
If your internet speed is affecting your trading performance, consider using a VPS.
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