Best broker for backtesting?

I've been out of FX for about a year now. Getting back in again!

I'm working on a few EA's and need an MT4 demo platform that provides decent historical. I've got Alpari UK (who've always been good) but there's big chunks of data missing from the history. I tried deleteing/downloading again, but no joy!

I then downloaded Collective FX's MT4. Server won't give me a demo login.

Any suggestions?

FXCM Strategy Trader

http://www.fxcm.com/open-strategy-trader-demo.jsp

Is this MQL4 compatible? I need MQL4 compatability

Unfortunately, it's not. But maybe you should just download MT4 from a few of the big FX brokers out there and try it out.

Yeah I downloaded the FXCM MT4 package. Same story, missing a lot of EURUSD data from late 2011

Randomly or over a specific amount of time?

most of it seems to be there, back to 1999 I think, It's just missing a big chunk from around Sep '11 to Dec '11. There might be some earlier data missing too, I can't remember.

Well, check out with some other brokers (Oanda, MB Trading or CitiFX), if it is common, I'd suggest contacting a broker via live chat on Monday.

Happy trading!

It isn't a good idea making backtests on Alpari UK demo, bc its data feed comes from their PRO server. This means you get fooled by tight spreads you never will get on their classic or micro accounts. In general I would never trade with this broker, bc he cheats on the customers with endless slippage and other dirty tricks.
A general problem I noticed recently is , it seems the meta quote archive isn't complete anymore. I don't know why.... I guess since MT4 is made for brokers, not for us, it could happen with full intention to produce misleading backtesting results.

To get a permanent demo just ask the broker of your choise for one.
i.e. GOMarkets provides this service

This depends on your particular strategy to some extent but I would recommend you first decide on which live broker you are going to use and then use their demos for test data. If you ask them, they will usually supply live a/c clients with more complete/accurate history.

The differences between data from different brokers can be significant enough to ruin your strategy. Also pay particular attention to the server GMT offset used which again differs between brokers.

Whichever you use, you will be subject to spreads in force at the time of testing so, if the broker's spreads are variable, weekend testing means big spreads on everything. This is no good for strategies requiring tight TP, SL, etc... You can eliminate this issue by taking precautions detailed elsewhere on FF regarding back testing and spread values used.

Regards, Paul.

Hello FrinkFX.

Congrats for getting back into the game.
If you are for the long run and will be testing several EA s or strategies. This is what has worked the best for me, and also my suggestion:

Dukascopy history data (tick data) is the best I found, but the process to make usable in mt4 is a bit tricky. Whatever time or resources you spend getting it down is well worth it. Having good data it is all what matters. After that any broker's mt4 will do as they are all the same.

You need to Google birt tick data and you will find all the details of how to do it. It is all free.


Some of the issues your will be facing:

It may take time to learn the process.

It takes a lot of resources from your computer. Example, 3 years of EUR/USD raw tick data is about 6G. After that you have to create 1m, 5m, etc. Each of these is about 2G.

Depending on the speed of your computer, it may take from 10 hrs to days to download from Dukascopy, then a few hours to make each of the time frame you need. (by the way, when you create the time frames data, you can stipulate any spread you want. I use 2 pips for EUR/USD and that is a bit higher then the Brokers I trade with)

In about a week you will be done and will never regret the headache you went thru. .. After that you could update every 6 month or so.

You will be able to get 99% quality back-tests.
You will see all those million dollars EA s sold for $99 getting a curve straight down. In reality, it is very easy to Make an EA to show profits in a mt4 with regular data. Just use short stops or tight trailing and optimize a bit and Done.

A lot traders say that doing back-tests is wasting time. I understand why they say that, but is not true. A BT with good data provides a wealth of information about the weakness and strength of the systems we create, therefore a chance to improve them.

Hi All,

Ive also just got back into FX and am reconfiguring my old EA for the current market. However Ive tried 2 brokers for demo accounts with MT4 and the backtester doesnt seem to work properly. It just trades every candlle, opens a heap of trades on each candle. Am I doing something wrong or is the brokers demo server busted?
I have a live account with a broker and same thing happens... Any advice would be great.

legacy platform offers legacy results
my opinion is to export data, send your output to platforms such as Quantopian or any python ones, then conduct data analysis

edit: added comment to never curve fit

Agree if you need a backtester better to write your own one for example in Python and use Pandas dataframe with csv with historical prices to conduct analysis. Learning programming language especially data analysis will be a bonus.

Alpari NZ Best broker for backtesting

How to find that you broker is good or bad for backtesting? Quality of candle historical data or.. what should be the key criteria?

You really need a demo account to get back into trading.
I wouldn't recommend going straight back to trading in a real account.