Released in 2005, the MT4 trading software became extremely popular with retail forex traders especially for its easy to use features and the ability to even facilitate automated trading by allowing users to write their own trading scripts and trading robots (commonly known as expert advisors). MetaTrader 4, commonly nicknamed MT4, is a widely used electronic trading platform for retail foreign exchange, developed by the Russian software company MetaQuotes Software Corp, which is currently licensing the MT4 software to almost 500 brokers and banks worldwide.