A trading terminal is the program you install on your own machine to connect to your broker's server. In forex it usually means the MetaTrader terminal — MT4 or MT5 — the window where you see prices, draw on charts, place orders and run automated strategies. The word "terminal" is literal: it's the endpoint you sit at, talking to the broker's server somewhere else.
Terminal versus server
These are two halves of one system. The broker runs the server: it holds the account records, matches your orders and feeds the prices. You run the terminal: it displays that feed and sends your instructions back. Your money and your open positions live on the server, not in the terminal — so if you close the terminal, your trades stay open. The terminal is only the client that shows them and lets you act.
What the terminal shows
The MetaTrader terminal has a few main parts:
- Market Watch — the live quote list, with bid and ask for each symbol.
- Charts — price history with your indicators and drawings.
- Navigator — your accounts, plus installed Expert Advisors, indicators and scripts.
- Terminal window (the Toolbox on MT5) — the Trade tab for open positions, History for closed trades, and the Journal, a log of what the terminal actually did.
What it does
Beyond showing prices, the terminal places, changes and closes orders; runs Expert Advisors, the MQL4 or MQL5 programs that trade automatically; runs indicators and scripts; and keeps the trade and account history that every performance figure is later calculated from. That local history is only a cache, though — the full, authoritative record sits on the broker's server, which is why two people looking at the same account can see slightly different history depending on how far back each terminal has downloaded.
An EA is only "on" while its terminal is running and connected. Close the laptop or drop the connection and the EA stops making decisions — which is why serious EA traders keep the terminal on a VPS that never sleeps.
A worked example
One terminal is usually one account. Say you run three EAs across three brokers: that's three terminal windows, three logins, three sets of charts and three journals to check by hand. If a VPS costs £15 a month and you run four terminals on it to keep four EAs live around the clock, that's under £4 per account for uptime — cheap insurance against a missed trade, but still four separate places to read performance, one window at a time.
Why it matters for EA traders
The terminal is the single source of truth. Its History tab is where your real results live, not a vendor's screenshot. One terminal per account also means that watching several EAs means several windows — which is the problem that MultiTerminal and monitoring tools exist to solve. And it's worth being clear on access: anything holding your terminal password can trade, while anything holding only your investor password can look but not touch.
The Karnek note
Karnek connects to your terminal with the investor (read-only) password, so it mirrors everything the History and Trade tabs show without ever holding the trading password. It can display your account in full and still be structurally unable to place a single order.
Written and reviewed by the Karnek Research team. Last updated August 2026.
Educational content only - not financial advice. Past performance does not predict future results. Trading carries significant risk.