Backtesting may be simple but there are few rules you should follow. and the most important one of these rules is not to use data from a generic source. All data must be obtained from your broker server. Unfortunately most people ignore this and head directly to the Metatrader history download center where all data is actually obtained from third party servers. The data from third party servers differ greatly from the one you can readily have from your own broker server, thus your bactesting results are not reliable and should not be considered in determining the success of your Forex strategy.

Obtaining data from your broker server is actually very easy and readily available. All you have to do is keep your chart on the M1 time frame, once you have this access to that the other time frames are much easier to get when you briefly switch your chart to the other longer time frames. This is a fact because there is so much data in the M1 time frame. The instrument price changes more than 30 times per minute and as there are so many minutes per day you can imagine the size of data needed to cover few months in the m1 time frame. Only a fifth of that amount of data is needed on the M5 period and so on for the other longer periods. So once you have the data for the shortest time frame the others time frames are very easy to calculate by your trading platform if not already loaded by brief switching to the longer periods on your Forex charts.

Besides having your Forex trading chart on the shortest time frame you should also scroll back your chart in the weekends as far as you can. Forex brokers leave theirs servers on for you most of the weekend and during those times the Forex market is usually closed for trading and the servers are not overloaded. The weekends are the best times in the week to scroll your charts back to obtain as much data as you possibly can directly from your broker server so you can backtest you Forex strategy.

Another rule you should follow is that you should stick to most recent times. Forex market changes its behavior rapidly and nothing that worked years ago would work today. so it makes no sense to get data for the ancient times. you should concentrate on the last few months only, in fact this makes things easier for you. Since it is nearly impossible to get accurate dependable data for all time frames for ancient times. You should concentrate on getting a full set of data for a particular Forex instrument for few months back without interruptions all the way to the day in which you perform your back test.

The third and the final rule I would like to mention here that you should keep in mind when it comes to backtesting Forex in Metatrader is this: Do not try to take a short cut. Many people who are new to Forex trading perform backtest of a failing Expert advisors within minutes and get successful results. Even if you use the most powerful workstation a back test on Metatrader 4 would take few hours to complete, and that even without using the visual mode in which you could see the trades and the price movements on the chart. The speed of the movement in a simulation is highly dependent on your computer memory and processing power. Backtesting must always be done based on every tick of market data or your back test may be nothing but misleading. The more open trades overlap and a trailing stop is used the more is the processing needed by your CPU and thus the longer the time a back test would take. So why rush a good thing, Start your backtest correctly and leave it to take its course while you are doing whatever thing you like to do, In the end of the test Mt4 will hand you the full report that you can look at and study, so you can then modify your options and go for the next backtest, and so on and on. Forever.

Autoriskmax effect by account size

Autoriskmax effect by account size

Autoriskmax effect by account size

Autoriskmax effect by account size

Autoriskmax effect by account size