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Getting started

MetaTrader, and connecting it to TradeLens

Installing the platform, understanding what you are looking at, and the fifteen-minute job of connecting your account so your trades appear on your dashboard by themselves.

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MetaTrader 4 and 5 are the two platforms most South African brokers hand you. They look dated because they are, and they are still the most reliable way to trade a retail account. Nearly everything in this library applies to both.

The four windows

  • Market Watch (Ctrl+M) — the symbol list and live prices. Right-click a symbol → Specification shows contract size, minimum lot and spread. Those numbers are what the position size calculator asks you for.
  • Navigator (Ctrl+N) — your accounts, indicators and Expert Advisors.
  • The chart — one instrument, one timeframe. Right-click → Properties for colours.
  • Terminal (Ctrl+T) — open positions, history, and the Experts and Journal tabs. When something is not working, the answer is almost always in one of those two tabs.

Demo first, and for longer than you want to

A demo account behaves identically apart from one thing: losing on it does not hurt, which is exactly the variable being tested. Trade the demo until you have thirty trades that follow your own rules. If you cannot do it when nothing is at stake, live money will not improve your discipline.

Connecting your account to TradeLens

MetaTrader shows you what is happening now. It is poor at showing you what you have been doing over weeks — which is the thing that actually needs looking at. Connecting it takes about fifteen minutes by hand, or a couple of minutes with the installer.

The fast way, on Windows: sign in here, open Downloads and grab the installer. It finds every MT4 and MT5 you have on the machine, copies the file into each one you tick, and asks for your account token once. Windows will show a blue "Windows protected your PC" screen the first time, because the installer is new and not code-signed yet — click More info, then Run anyway, it is not a sign anything is wrong. After it finishes, still check Tools → Options → Expert Advisors yourself — the installer tries to whitelist the URL for you but that part is not guaranteed on every MetaTrader build.

By hand, or on Mac/Linux:

  1. Sign in here and open Downloads. You get two files for your platform.
  2. Put them in MetaTrader's data folder: File → Open Data Folder, then MQL4\Experts (or MQL5\Experts). Both files, same folder.
  3. In MetaTrader: Tools → Options → Expert Advisors, tick Allow WebRequest for listed URL and add https://tradelens.co.za.
  4. Create a token on your Account page and paste it into the settings when you attach the file to a chart.
  5. Drag it onto one chart. One is enough — it reports the account, not the chart.

Either way, within a few seconds your balance, open positions and full closed history appear on your dashboard, and keep updating on their own. It cannot open, close or modify a trade; there is no order-sending code in it.

One chart, not one per instrument

The most common question: "I trade gold and US30 — do I need it on both charts?" No. It reads the account. Every position on every symbol arrives regardless of which chart it sits on. Attaching it twice does no damage but doubles the traffic and sends every alert twice.

If nothing appears

Check the Experts tab in the Terminal window. The three usual causes: the URL was not whitelisted (you get a WebRequest error), the token was pasted with a space on the end, or Allow live trading is unticked — MetaTrader uses that same permission for internet access.

← What trading actually is Reading a chart without kidding yourself →