In this article we will be talking about the Expert Advisors for Metatrader 4 platform. There are so many of them available online nowadays and they are created by thousands of different programmers. Looks like everyone can create an EA these days.

Some of those Forex robots have unique features that others dont have and that makes them to be special. Lets look at those features and how they are useful to traders. These 5 features drive my attention the most.

1. Compatibility with any MT4 platform with all Forex brokers.

2. Supports 5-digit price format.

3. Obey MQL trading rules and handle trade execution errors intelligently.

5. Offers a lot of settings and inputs.

When i need to find or create a new Expert Advisor, i always make sure these 5 features are included. If you operate any kind of Forex business and use trading robots, you should definitely learn this information. Forex trading may be unreliable if you ignore it. Now lets take a closer look at each of those features.

Compatibility with any MT4 platform with all Forex brokers

The EA will not be a reliable if it runs only on some Metatrader terminals. It should be ready to use with a dealing desk accounts, STP/ECN accounts and any other MT4 account that is available. No one knows which broker you may end up using next year or later, so make sure you choose software that is compatible with any MT4 client terminal.

Supports 5-digit price format

If an Expert Advisor does not handle 5-digit prices automatically, you better look for other solution. It should be programmed to convert your inputs, such as take profit and stop loss in pips, automatically. It is really important, because if EA does not take care about converting your settings into 5-digit price format, you will end up confused what numbers to enter among different MT4 accounts.

Obey MQL trading rules and handle trade execution errors intelligently

It is obvious that from time to time any software can experience errors. It could be internet connection problems or broker server problems. Or simply it could be a price re-quotes, timeouts, broker “trade context busy” errors, not enough money on a MT4 account and the list goes on.

It is important that Expert Advisor should be able to handle those errors and do necessary to obey MQL trading rules. EA should wait 1 5 seconds after an error before repeating the same trading action. This makes sense because if EA tries to open a trade and trade context is busy, meaning another application is sending a trading action to broker server, it should wait a few seconds before trying to repeat that action again. And what if we have experienced a price re-quote and a new price data should be re-downloaded by the terminal? It is not wise to retry trading action immediately, at least a few seconds should pass to make sure the prices were updated. This is very crucial MQL rule. If MT4 EA does not obey such rule and keep sending a dozens of requests to the broker server, it may end up blocked.

Another example would be to stop opening a trade completely if EA gets an error which says “not enough money”. If there is not enough money in the account to open a particular trade, no matter how hard EA will try to open that trade again it will get the same result. Its obvious that extra money will not appear on the account in the next few minutes, so it is wise to stop this “trade open” operation.

When an error occurs it is always logged in the special log file and in an Experts tab at the bottom of the MT4 terminal. However, trading software that care about Forex traders, will definitely display error message codes on the chart to alert about an error.

Informative. Displays EA settings on screen

Best Forex trading software always have many settings and it is very convenient when they are displayed on the chart, at least the most important ones. If you ever wonder what settings you have set for the Expert Advisor, they are always there at your eye level on the screen. Extremely useful when you use EA on multiple charts with different settings.

Another great thing if EA displays spread and other useful information that helps to know current market situation.

Offers a lot of settings and inputs

Best currency trading programs will always offer you a wide range of options and settings. This allows an application to be used by many traders as every one of them will find something useful for them. Say if application offers 10 options, the first 3 may be useful for 100 customers while the next 4 will be useful to another 50 customers, not to mention that the rest 3 options can be useful to the 3rd group of customers.

Each trader will find whats best for him or her in the trading software and that what makes a software to be the best in it’s area.