Where can I find high frequency historical rates data to backtest on?

Hi all,

I'm very new to the world of FX trading and would like to first do some backtesting before I go live.

However, in order to do the backtest I need the historical rates data to test my strategy on.

So my question is, where can I find historical rates which match the frequency of what happens in the real world? I want to be able to calculate the drawdowns that would have occured.

For example, there doesn't seem to be much point in using only average daily rates because what if a massive drawdown occurred during the day and wiped out my margin?

This also brings me on to the question of how frequently the fx brokers measure the rate in order to determine margina calls etc. Is it every minute, second..and where can I find the historical data to match this?

Thanks!

1 minute bars are available from the MetaTrader platform. Just download Metatrader from any broker, go to the history center, select a currency and click download.

http://ratedata.gaincapital.com/ is Gain Capital's tick archive going back to 2001. The data is in csv files stored in .zip files. The quality is mixed with some drop sections and different files use somewhat different formats.

http://www.financial-spread-betting....ical-data.html has some more sources to look at