One of the great features for the MetaTrader platforms is the ability to use Expert Advisors. Expert Advisors, which are also called EAs, robots, and trading robots, are simply algorithms that decide when to take a trade. MetaTrader platforms can import these programs to place trades for the trader, automatically. There are a multitude of trading robots out there to use, and they can be anywhere from free, to several thousand dollars. Another thing that they can do is control the position size of any trade that you enter. So not only will they fire off a signal to buy or sell a currency pair, but they will also position it accordingly. While different EA parameters, trading styles, and quality can be found, the first thing that you should demand out of any trading robot you use is the ability to control the amount of risk taken on any signal given. The beauty of using an EA is that it can trade for you while you are not sitting at the computer. In fact, algorithmic trading has become a major tool in the arsenal of traders around the world. When you look at job postings for major financial firms, computer programming is quite often just as important as any type of trading skill, due to the mechanical nature of so many of the trading systems. The downside to using a trading robot is they need to be connected to the computer and Internet. In other words, if the power goes out, the trading robot won’t be able to help you. If you lose connectivity to your trading account, it will not place trades, or perhaps more importantly - get you out of a trade that has gone the wrong way. Computers can crash, and a multitude of other issues can occur. Because of this, there is still some human interaction needed when using these things. The quality of the individual EA can vary drastically, and not all trading setups have similar results. Some are tailored for specific currency pair, while others are tailored towards specific types of markets, be a trending, non-trending, bearish, bullish, or a multitude of other variables.

One of the great things about MetaTrader platforms is that at the bottom of them, they have a tab that says “market.” This is in the terminal, and opens up a marketplace for trading robots that have been vetted by Metaquotes, the parent company of MetaTrader. This isn’t to say that they can prove that they are profitable, just that you are typically going to find safer robots directly through the store. After all, we are talking about software, and that can always come with bad coding, viruses, and the like. However, when buying directly from the marketplace, you can see that there are a multitude of systems. It is because of this that you need to decide what type of trading theory you are trying to take advantage of. Are you trying to trade short-term? Long-term? Specific pairs? Or are you open to just about anything? At the end of the day, there are a lot of questions asked. However, for a fee you can borrow somebody else’s strategy, either renting or buying flat out. This marketplace allows you to try several different strategies, and add them to your trading. By clicking on a strategy that looks interesting, you can read the information around it, and see exactly what it is the author is trying to accomplish. There will be characteristics listed of the strategy, and some of the parameters as well, as you can quite often adjust the system that you’re using. More importantly, there are reviews and that allows you to see what other people experience. Ultimately, the market should gravitate towards more profitable robots, so therefore they tend to be the ones that are the most downloaded. Most of the time, there are also screenshots available, showing you how things have played out.

While there are a multitude of expert advisors out there, they all are relatively simple to install to the MetaTrader platform. This is one of the greatest things about the MetaTrader platform, that it is built for automatic trading. There are other platforms out there that use Expert Advisors as well, but as over 90% of Forex traders use MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5, we will stick to using this common platform to demonstrate how simple it is to begin automated trading. Normally, the Expert Advisor comes in a .zip file, or with one or 2 other files independently. Essentially, there is only 2 files that truly matter: the .tpl file, and the .ex4 file. (.ex5 on MT5 platform) The .tpl file is simply the template file, as some Expert Advisors have different coloring or lines that will quantify exactly what’s going on, but there are plenty out there that are more “black box”, meaning that it will simply take the trade for you, and therefore have very little in the way of graphical representation. Those Expert Advisors may only come with the .ex4 file, which is the actual coding of the algorithm needed to place the trade. To install, you simply click on file inside the trading platform, and open the data folder. Inside the data folder, there is the templates folder, which is of course where the .tpl file would go, if you had one, and then there is the MQL4 (or MQL5) folder, which contains the Experts folder, which is where the .ex4 or .ex5 files goes. After dragging the file into that folder, you simply restart the MetaTrader platform. There is the auto trading button at the top of the platform that needs to be turned on, and then you can open up the expert advisors folder in the navigator window, and simply drag the trading robot onto the chart. At this point, you should see a smiley face in the upper right-hand corner along with the name of the indicator, showing you that things are working properly.