How to Locate Your Previous Positions on the Price Chart on MT4

Most traders are used to forget about the positions they take and never go back to check them, specially when those positions hit the stop loss. Novice traders are used to run away from their own mistakes and failures, and so they don’t like to analyze their losing positions, whereas they will learn a lot if they do it.

You can learn a lot form your losing positions. Also if you analyze your winning positions, you will learn to have a more optimum entry. You also learn to choose your stop loss and target levels better.

One problem of the novice traders problems in checking the previously taken positions is that they don’t know how to locate the exact entry and exit points on the the price charts. There is only a record in the account statement for the positions that are closed, and there is nothing left on the price chart that shows the exact entry and exit price, date and time. This makes it hard to analyze the previous positions.

In this post, I am going to show you how easy it is to locate your previous positions exact entry and exit price, date and time on the price chart. This is what you have to do:

1. Harder and Older Method:

This is what we were used to do on older builds of MT4.

1. Save your account history/report/statement:

First you have to save your trading account statement on your computer:

1. Press Ctrl+T or refer to View>Terminal at MT4 top menu, to open the MT4 terminal.
2. Click on “Account History” tab.
3. Right click on on “Account History” space that became opened when you clicked on “Account History” tab.
4. Click on “All History”.
5. Right click again and click on “Save as Report”.
6. Choose a name for the report and click on the “Save” button.

The report will be saved and then opened on your Internet browser automatically. You will see the exact record of all of the positions you have taken: Entry and exit prices, date and time. Each row is related to one single trade.

2. Find the trades on the price chart:

Let’s say you want to locate the below trade:

You have to open a GBP/USD price chart and choose the time frame you used to take the above position. Let’s say the above position was taken based on a trade setup on the daily chart:

1. Open the GBP/USD daily chart.
2. Click on the Tendline tool on the “Line Studies” toolbar at the top. Place a trendline somewhere on the chart. It can be anywhere.
3. Open the trendline properties and click on the “Parameters” tab:
   
   Tip:
   – To open the trendline properties window, you can double click on it to have the three small rectangles appeared on the line. Then, right click on the line and click on “Trendline properties…”.
   – There is an easier way too. You can press Ctrl+O to open the options. Then choose the “Objects” tab and put a check-mark for “Select object by single mouse click”. Then click on the “OK” button. Now if you double click on the lines and other objects you place on the price chart, their properties windows will be opened.
4. Refer to your trades report you just saved, highlight the “Open Time” and press Ctrl+C or right click on it and click on “Copy” to copy it to your computer clipboard:
   
5. Refer to the trendline properties and highlight the first time field at top left and then press Ctrl+V to paste the copied date/time to the field:
   
6. Do the same with the entry price which is the first price column on your account statement:
   
7. Paste the entry price to the first “Value” field at the top right of the trendline properties:
   
8. Repeat this with the “Close Time” and “Price” on your account statement:
   
   
   
   
9. Click on the “OK” button on the trendline properties window. As soon as you do it, the line jumps to the entry and exit date, time and price you just set:
   

The beginning of the line shows your entry and the end of line shows your exit:

You can plot horizontal lines for your stop loss and target orders through the same method I explained above. Just copy and paste the stop loss and target values to two horizontal lines values and they will sit where you had set your stop loss and target orders.

2. Easier and Faster Method:

New builds of MT4 support a much easier method that I didn’t know and one of LuckScout users, sajith, taught me:

You just drag and drop the trade record from the terminal to the chart:

Now you can analyze your position. You see the signal that made you take that position. With most of your losing positions, you see that you had entered the market either when there was no trade setup, or you entered based on a weak trade setup, whereas you thought you had located a good trade setup when you wanted to take that position.

Sometimes you ask yourself why you took that position, and in most cases you cannot find any answer for it. It means your emotions made you think that there was a trade setup there, but there wasn’t in reality.

Do this with some of your positions and ask yourself whether you had made the right decision to take them or not. You will be amazed about the things you will learn about yourself.