Connect MetaTrader 4

What this does

MetaTrader 4 is not a broker, it is the terminal your forex or CFD broker gives you. Connect MT4 and your broker is connected, whoever it is. Several hundred brokers reach VEXA this way.

There are two routes and they are worth understanding before you pick one.

The two routes

The VEXA Sync Expert Advisor. A small program you drop into your desktop MetaTrader. It reads your closed trades and sends them to VEXA every sixty seconds while the terminal is open. Set it up once and stop thinking about it. Start at Install the VEXA Sync Expert Advisor.

A Detailed Report you export. No install, no key, works on any account. You do it again every time you want VEXA up to date.

Most people run the Expert Advisor and upload one Detailed Report at the start to bring in their back history.

Before you start

• The Expert Advisor is desktop only. Mobile MetaTrader cannot run custom Expert Advisors, on any phone or tablet. See MetaTrader setup needs a desktop.
• Set your broker server timezone first. MetaTrader servers run on their own clock, VEXA’s default assumes GMT+2, and plenty of brokers are not on it. Check the time on any symbol in Market Watch and compare it to UTC. See Set your broker server timezone.
• Set Account History to All History before doing anything else. Both routes read what the terminal is showing, and the default view is about a month.
• Quantities are shown in lots. One lot is 100,000 units of the base currency.
• Forex, CFDs, metals and indices are supported.

Steps

Detailed Report, not the Normal one

The right-click menu offers both. The Normal report leaves out commission, swap and profit detail, and without those VEXA cannot reconstruct some trades. If your import comes back thin or empty, this is the first thing to check.

Limits and gotchas

• The wrong timezone shifts every trade. It changes the day a trade lands on and the session it is classified into. It is the single most common MT4 problem and it is invisible until you compare a trade to your terminal.
• All History or nothing. With the default period selected, the export and the Expert Advisor both see about a month of trades.
• Save the report, do not re-save it in Excel. Opening an MT4 report in a spreadsheet and saving it again can break the encoding.
• The Expert Advisor only runs while MetaTrader is open. Trades closed with the terminal shut are sent the next time you open it. For continuous syncing, run MT4 on a forex VPS.
• Swap is handled as a signed amount. A positive swap credit reduces your cost rather than adding to it, so carry trades read correctly.

What you should see

Expert Advisor: the EA connection card on the MetaTrader page in VEXA turns green and reports a last sync in seconds or minutes.

Detailed Report: a result panel naming an MT4 format, with a count of closed trades. Spot-check one against your terminal, including its time, before uploading years of history.

If it doesn’t work

• “No trades were found in this file.” You saved the Normal report instead of the Detailed one, or Account History was not set to All History.
• Every trade is on the wrong day. The broker server timezone is wrong. Fix it and re-import.
• The Expert Advisor is installed and nothing arrives. See MetaTrader troubleshooting.