MT4 vs MT5 Trading Journals: How One Trade Differs
MetaTrader 4 records orders; MetaTrader 5 keeps orders, deals and positions apart. What the platforms' own documentation says and what to ask a journal's importer.
3 Nov 2026 · 7 min read
MetaTrader 4 records orders; MetaTrader 5 records orders, deals and positions as three different things. So when a journal imports a history, the question “what is one trade?” has a different starting point on each platform, and the journal has to decide the rest. This page sets out what each platform's own documentation says, shows how the choice changes a trade count with made-up numbers, and lists what to ask an importer. It names no journal.
What each platform's own documentation says
| Question | MetaTrader 4 (MQL4 documentation) | MetaTrader 5 (help and MQL5 documentation) |
|---|---|---|
| What is an open trade? | An order in the trading pool, which holds “opened and pending orders”. | A position: “a trade obligation, i.e. the number of bought or sold contracts of a financial instrument”. It is not the same as an order. |
| What does the closed history hold? | The history pool: “closed and canceled order”. An order is closed when its close time is not 0; open and pending orders have a close time of 0. | The History tab lists “a list of deals”, which it describes as “the actual purchase and sale transactions executed based on the orders”. |
| What carries the identifier? | The order: “Unique number of the order ticket”. | A position ticket is “a unique number assigned to each newly opened position”, and “each order and deal receive a ticket relating to their relevant position”. |
Quotation marks are MetaQuotes' own words. Whether a given MT4 account behaves as hedging is covered in netting vs hedging accounts.
On MT5, whether you can hold several positions in one symbol depends on the account: hedging allows multiple open positions in one symbol, including opposite ones; netting allows “only one common position for a symbol at the same time”. The broker sets which. Hedging closes a position with the “Close Position” command; netting needs you to “perform an opposite trading operation”. Close By is hedging only.
On MT5, a deal is the row, and a trade is something a journal builds
An MT5 deal has an entry type, and the MQL5 documentation lists four: “Entry in”, “Entry out”, “Reverse” and “Close a position by an opposite one”. The same list of deals also carries rows that are not trades: the deal-type list includes balance, credit, additional charge, correction, bonus, several kinds of commission, interest, tax and cancelled buy and sell deals. A journal that reads every row as a trade will count a balance entry as one.
Two made-up examples show why the grouping matters. They are not anyone's trading, and the sums are the only point.
- Scaling out. A hedging account buys 1.00 lot, then closes 0.40 lot, then closes the remaining 0.60 lot. That is one entry deal and two exit deals on one position: three rows, one position. A journal can show it as one trade with two exits, or as two trades, or as three rows. The trade count is 1, 2 or 3 depending on a choice the importer makes, and the win rate and average win move with it.
- Reversing. A netting account buys 1.00 lot, then sells 1.50 lots. The net position is 1.00 − 1.50 = -0.50, that is a short of 0.50 lot. The second order closes the long and opens a short in one step, which is what a “Reverse” deal entry names. MT5's help says a position cannot be reversed in the hedging system, so this case only arises on netting accounts. One order has closed one trade and opened another.
Check how your platform and your journal treat a partial close by putting one test trade through, as the questions below suggest.
What to ask a journal's importer
- What does it key a trade on: the MT4 order ticket, or an MT5 position? What happens when the same position has several exits?
- Does it keep balance, credit, commission and similar rows out of the trade count, and does it still take their cost into the result?
- On a netting account, how does it show a reversal: one trade closed and one opened, or a single row?
- Does it read pending orders that never filled as trades, and cancelled ones?
- Does it treat each account as its own record, so two accounts that both hold EURUSD are not merged?
The same questions, in a longer checklist for choosing any journal, are on the trading journal features checklist, and how eight vendors word their imports is on the Edgewonk alternatives page. For how these two platforms behave when a copier repeats an order, see MetaTrader 4 vs 5 for copying.
How each platform's export lays these rows out is on the export guides for MT4, MT5 and cTrader.
Where Trepeat is
This page compares no journals, Trepeat's included.
We're working on a free journal and a backtester, with no date yet. Today Trepeat is a trade copier for MT4, MT5 and cTrader, currently on demo accounts, and you can add notes, a grade and screenshots to any copied trade once it closes, with a calendar of your results.
Its journal attaches your own notes, grade and screenshots to a closed trade once, on the source trade.
Written by the Trepeat team.