Clear MT5 trade history: what you can and cannot do

You usually cannot delete account history from the terminal. Here is what you can hide, what you can clean, and how to start fresh.

Traders ask how to clear or delete their trade history in MetaTrader 5 for a few different reasons: the list looks cluttered, they want a fresh start after a bad month, or they are afraid something will be shared. The answer depends on what you mean by history. This page separates the things that can be hidden, the things that live on the broker's server, and the things you can safely clean up.

The short answer

You generally cannot erase your account's trade history from the terminal. The official record of orders, deals and positions is held by the broker's trade server, and the terminal downloads it for display. What you can change is what the terminal shows, by choosing a different period, and what exists on your own computer, such as cached files and saved reports. If you need the broker's record altered, that is a matter for the broker, and in practice brokers keep these records for regulatory reasons.

Three kinds of history that get mixed up

A lot of search results about clearing history are really about the second and third rows. Deleting price history helps with a slow terminal or a corrupted chart, and removing chart objects tidies the screen, but neither one touches your account record.

How to change what the History tab shows

Open View, then Terminal (or press Ctrl+T) and choose the History tab. Right-click inside the list to pick a period such as today, the last week, the last month, the last three months, all history or a custom period. Choosing a short period makes older rows disappear from view without deleting anything, and choosing all history brings them back. Menu wording varies between builds and brokers, so check your own terminal. If a period shows nothing when you expected rows, see trade history not showing.

Removing trade arrows and lines from a chart

If the clutter you want to remove is on the chart, such as buy and sell arrows from past trades, that is controlled by chart settings and objects rather than by account history. The page on trade history on the chart explains how to show and hide those markers. Hiding them does not alter the account record.

Starting fresh the right way

People who want a fresh start usually want one of two things: a clean performance statistic, or a clean mind. Both are possible without deleting anything. For a clean statistic, choose a start date and compare only trades after it. The monthly and weekly views in a journal do this naturally, and a Progress page with a monthly target lets you restart the count each month. For a clean mind, a short written review of the old period, what you learned and what you will do differently, does more than an empty list. The weekly trading review checklist is a simple way to close a period honestly.

Some traders open a new demo or live account for a fresh record. That is a legitimate choice, and it is the only way to get a list that starts at zero, because the old account's record stays with the old account. Keep in mind that multi-account setups need a journal that can follow more than one login, as described on multi-account trading journal.

What about privacy?

If the worry is that others can see your trades, the useful questions are who has access to your login, whether you share your investor password, and where your journal copy is stored. The account record on the broker's server is theirs and is not something a desktop clean-up affects. A journal that is a file on your own computer is a copy you control and can delete. Whatever you decide, never post a trading password or investor password on any website, and be careful with screenshots of the History tab, which show account numbers and balances.

A worked example (hypothetical)

A trader had a rough October and wants to stop seeing it. Instead of looking for a delete button that does not exist, the trader sets the History tab to a custom period starting on 1 November, exports the October rows to a spreadsheet for the record, and writes five lines about what went wrong. In the journal, a filter on the new month shows only the fresh trades, and the monthly target on the Progress page restarts at zero. Nothing was erased, no data was lost, and the next review will compare November with a clear October baseline rather than a hidden one.

How the journal fits in

AI Trading Journal reads closed positions from your MetaTrader 5 history and keeps them in a journal file on your own PC. It is read-only toward MetaTrader 5, so it never places, changes or deletes a trade, and it cannot clear your account history either. The journal file is yours: you can back it up, restore it or move it, and a daily automatic backup keeps a copy of the journal, goals and screenshots. Notion is an optional extra copy, not required.

Limits

• The advice here covers what the terminal does in general. Brokers can run customised builds, so check your own.
• Deleting local files such as price history can affect charts and tests, so back up first if unsure.
• Nothing here is advice to hide or alter records you must keep for tax or compliance. The page on trade history for tax records explains why keeping them matters.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• A local trading journal for MT5
• P&L calendar for MT5
• Trade notes, ratings and screenshots
• Trading progress and goals
• Back up your journal and move it to a new PC
• An offline trading journal for Windows
• How to set monthly trading goals
• Import your whole MT5 history
• How to tag trades
• Trade screenshots for your journal
• All trading journal comparisons