Get your terminal right before you buy a strategy

Starter Toolkit is a free bundle of small utilities for MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, maintained by Forex Tool Vault Labs, the marketplace's in-house team. It exists because most support tickets for paid Expert Advisors turn out to be setup problems: a wrong GMT offset, Algo Trading left off, a symbol with an unexpected suffix, or a lot size that does not match the account. The toolkit finds those problems on a demo account before any money is involved. It is a full product with lifetime updates and ticket support, not a trial.

Installation Checker

Attach the checker to any chart and it verifies that automated trading is enabled at the terminal and chart level, that the account allows Expert Advisors, that the terminal build meets the minimum for every product in this catalog, and that the data folder paths for Experts, Indicators and Presets are where the installation guides expect them. It reports the broker's server offset from UTC and whether the broker appears to apply daylight-saving changes, which is exactly the number the session Expert Advisors ask for. Everything is shown on the chart and written to the Experts log so it can be pasted into a support ticket.

Spread and Session Monitor

The monitor records the spread of the current symbol every few seconds and shows the average and maximum for the Asian, London and New York sessions over the days it has been running. After a week on a demo account you will know whether your broker's gold spread at London open fits Aurora XAU's requirements or whether GBPUSD at 08:00 London is inside Shadow's limit. It also flags rollover widening so you can see how long it lasts at your broker.

Lot-Size Calculator

A small panel that takes a risk percentage and a stop distance and returns the lot size, the amount at risk in account currency and the margin required, reading contract size, tick value and leverage from the terminal. It handles cent accounts, gold and index CFDs correctly and rounds to the broker's lot step. It does not place orders; it is there to help you sanity-check what an Expert Advisor's sizing input will do before you enable it.

Starter presets

The bundle includes a conservative starter .set file for each Expert Advisor sold on this marketplace, with risk set to the lowest sensible value and all optional filters enabled. They are meant for a first demo run, not as a replacement for the vendor's own presets, and each is named with the EA version it targets.

Reading performance reports

Finally, the PDF included with the toolkit explains how to read the sample performance data shown on this marketplace: what profit factor, maximum drawdown and win rate mean, why a backtest with a fixed spread is optimistic, how a demo forward run differs from a live account, and why none of it is a prediction. New traders who read this section first tend to choose more sensibly and file fewer tickets.

License

The toolkit is free, requires a marketplace account so updates and support can be tied to your download, and may be installed on as many of your own terminals as you like. It carries no performance data because it does not trade.

• MetaTrader 4 build 1415 or later, or MetaTrader 5 build 4410 or later.
• Any account type; a demo account is the recommended place to run the checker and monitor first.
• A free marketplace account to download and receive updates.

1. Download and extract the archive from your account. It contains MT4 and MT5 folders, a presets folder and the PDF.
2. MetaTrader 4: open File > Open Data Folder, copy the .ex4 files from the MT4 folder into MQL4/Experts and the .set files into MQL4/Presets.
3. MetaTrader 5: open File > Open Data Folder, copy the .ex5 files from the MT5 folder into MQL5/Experts and the .set files into MQL5/Presets.
4. Restart the terminal so the tools appear in the Navigator under Expert Advisors.
5. Enable AutoTrading (MT4) or Algo Trading (MT5) on the toolbar; the Installation Checker will tell you if this step was missed.
6. Drag InstallationChecker onto any chart and read its report on the chart and in the Experts tab.
7. Drag SpreadSessionMonitor onto the chart of the symbol you plan to trade and leave it running for several days.
8. Use LotSizeCalculator on any chart whenever you want to check what a risk setting means in lots and currency.