Thank you for the warm welcome.

If I may offer the following views:

I use MT4 because of the ease of use for coding and execution provided by the broker and my comfort and trust level in its use and broker dealings.

Over many year of being in the industry, I have tried many other platforms including Tradestation, Bloomberg, CQG, CTrader and others similar. The main issue with these other platforms that I have found is the provider / broker is not a true ECN and does not offer the services I need or recommend for trading. Programs such as these can also be cost prohibitive relative to 1) learning curve, 2) backtesting capabilities, 3) manipulated feed, 4) A/B booking, 5) manipulated spreads, 6) poor customer service, 7) slow execution and a whole barrel full of other issues.

I personally learned to code MQL4 because frankly I felt I could not trust any developer or coder with my trading strategies. So once I was committed to MT4, that gave me the direction to follow. I do have a certain size limit on positions (500 lots), but can increase with a phone call if needed. Since the systems are automated but manually monitored,  my limitations are confined to 1) liquidity, 2) speed of execution, 3)data pipe line size, 4)slippage (if any) 5) computer hardware, 6) backup capabilities 7) virtual environment.  Its interesting that some brokers (criminals) will market / advertise narrow spreads but in reality, the cost of the trade makes up for the narrow spread thus the feed is manipulated.  Example.. I know of several large big name FX providers were caught having MT4 modules on the clearing server that would slow down the feed at the moment of execution to create just enough slippage to pad the trade in favor of the broker.  I have personally recorded and reported a large FX broker stalling a feed at various intervals.  This stalling is just enough to create slippage or missed trade opportunities.    If you do not keep your MT4 "alive" or connected to the server, that few milliseconds to reconnect can cost you a trade or gains.  Thus I use a script that maintains an "Alive" condition on MT4 to the broker.  This will help offset the lack of API feed connection for a true tic updated price quotation of the data feed, versus the burstable quotes which all MT4 brokers provide.   I am aware of a new platform being developed which will provide the feed as an API data and not the burstable update.

Other situations, example:  I have had one of my Registered CTA's make huge profits on trades only to be told that he was cheating. The broker (big name FX broker) confiscated the profits and closed the account. Other brokers keep profits because you violated minimum trade time in a position, or manipulated feed to increase or float stops forcing you out of a position. Many lessons learned.

When it comes to a broker, I have no mercy.  I have reviewed most every mainstream platform and broker available. I choose to be where I am for many reasons. I choose not to use other platforms because I have spent many years learning MT4 and FSB. It may not be a combination suited for all, but it does work for me.

I am in the middle of working on several large projects which I believe can incorporate FSB and Big Data Analytics with the potential to connect to several analytic software (R, IBM) which is predictive in nature and could be used by the industry to predict how a market will react to certain economic events and data. I don't want to go into a lot of details here, but the issue will always be developing and assembling a trustworthy team for coding. I created an algo for the market condition identification, which is what we trade daily. Now I am working on the process of "marrying" that data to "event data" for real time streaming market analysis. Of notable interest, I do not limit this to FOREX only.. example: over the past 2 months, have accurately identified moves on AAPL stock movement that resulted in +$213 in total moves, all announced in Advance with commentary, Charts, specific price points and entry/exit levels and even combined with Options for greater gains.

What FSB has allowed me to do is refine that algo based on the ability to quickly scan market data.  It is the fastest I have seen and that I am willing to adopt for my uses.

I am a big student of GANN Octaves, MurreyMath, Fibonnacci and Linear Regression. I am probably one of the few (maybe the only) that teaches and trades a unique combination of these four combined. As such and regarding your question of system / strategy duration, based on the principles I work with and my self learned market principles, the markets are dynamic to the extent that they are predictable with a high % while at the same time, are cyclic in nature with each currency pair yielding it's own characteristics of maturation of cycles. These cycles, which are based on natural vibrations in the market place are as uniquely and timely conjoined to the pair as say... a certain aspect declination of Mercury to the Moon as to the EURUSD.  My opinion and experience of the markets is that the 4 seasons are the overall large key, with smaller "events" occurring during each of the 4 periods. All of my strategies begin with a look back period not to exceed the Harvest Moon of the previous year. This sets up the master cycle moving forward. I then proceed on a quarterly walk-forward basis.  Within the quarterly, that period is also broken down to smaller periods, eventually moving down to H1 or H4 depending on the pair and cycle quarter.   I try to work in harmony with the markets trading both in unison and counter to market reactions.  A search on these 4 aspects, will yield you much production write-ups and whitepapers I have created on the subject.

One of my biggest eye openers of my early career was to watch a chief dealer monitor his software, A/B book, and learn where the mass market had a majority of their stops located, and could target those price levels, thereby easily identifying where to offset risk, and where to plan the gains. If the market was trending, the dealer would lay of the markets passing risk on to counter parties. If the market was range bound, the dealer would nail the unsuspecting traders.  They could see the aggregated stop levels and modify or adjust their risk as needed. In the beginning I battled the dealer and lost.  In the end, I learned - becoming the best I could be with a great deal of knowledge.. the dealer lost. In the end, the dealer was forced to close the department.  True Story.

And in the words of the famous Paul Harvey, "Now You Know The Rest Of The Story".

Hope this helps..