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How to import MetaTrader 4 and 5 trades into a journal

5 min read

MetaTrader is widely used across retail forex and CFD trading, yet MT4 and MT5 offer neither an OAuth flow nor a public API for account history. Products that sync MetaTrader trades therefore rely on a statement upload, an investor-password service, or a connector running inside the terminal. It is worth knowing which route you use.

The three approaches, and their trade-offs

  • Manual statement export. Save the account history as a report and upload it. Reliable and requires nothing installed, but it is a task you have to remember, and reports vary by broker.
  • Investor password. You hand a read-only password to a service that logs into your account from its own server. Convenient, but it means giving a third party live credentials and expands the security surface.
  • A connector inside your own terminal. A small Expert Advisor runs on your MetaTrader and pushes closed positions out. Nothing is handed over and nothing logs in as you, but your terminal has to be running.

LynxTrades uses the third. The direct MT5 connection and its investor password were retired in August 2026.

Closed positions move from your own MetaTrader terminal, through the connector Expert Advisor attached to a chart, out to the journal. Nothing logs in to your account.YOUR TERMINALMT4 / MT5 openClosed positionsCONNECTOR EAon any chartReads historyYOUR JOURNALlynxtrades.comTrades appearPush, not pull. Nothing syncs while the terminal is closed.No password is handed over, and no server name is entered.
The data leaves your machine rather than something logging in to fetch it. That is why the terminal has to be open.

Setting up the connector

From Settings → Accounts → Linked Brokerages, choosing MetaTrader opens a portal that supplies the connector EA. Four steps on your own machine:

  1. Copy the EA into MQL4/Experts for MT4, or MQL5/Experts for MT5.
  2. Attach it to any open chart. Which chart and which symbol do not matter; it reads account history, not the chart.
  3. Enable AutoTrading on MT4, or Algo Trading on MT5. This is the step people miss.
  4. Allow the ingest URL shown in the portal under the terminal's WebRequest settings, so the EA is permitted to send data out.

Why it stops syncing

Almost every case is one of three things, in this order:

  1. The terminal is closed. The EA pushes from your machine, so nothing syncs while MetaTrader is not running. A VPS is the usual fix for anyone who does not leave a desktop on.
  2. The EA came off the chart. Closing a chart or changing profile detaches it. Check for the smiley face in the top-right of the chart.
  3. AutoTrading got switched off, often by a terminal restart. The button has to be green.

What about prop firms?

MT4/MT5-based prop accounts, including FTMO and FundedNext, connect exactly the same way because the connector treats them as ordinary MetaTrader accounts. Firms on their own platforms are a different matter: Apex Trader Funding and Rithmic/R|Trader Pro have no auto-sync route today, and CSV import is the alternative there.

Whichever route you use, the thing worth optimising for is not the setup; it is whether you still have a complete record in six months. A method that syncs on its own beats a better one you stop doing in March.

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