Backtest-how?

Hi,

How do I backtest manual trading system? What software do I need to trade on historical data, I have a cpl of good trading systems and I really want to test them, I just dont know how to do it.
Can someone help me pls?
Thx
HankT

try tradeinterceptor . iT has a replay in the past module with buy and sell.

If you use MT4, have a look at the profile of Ronald:

http://www.forexfactory.com/ronald*raygun

In "about Ronald" there is a link to trade simulator. It is a nice EA that lets you watch historical data, place virtual trades and see how would they turn out.

Check out Nub's Trading EA. Fast and Easy to use.

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=289899

comes with free steak knives *

*steak knives not included

Just in case its worth asking on this active thread..

Anyone have a solution that allows manual backtesting on multiple timeframes?

As an example, to have 2 charts (running at different timeframes, and with their own indicators) controlled by the same play button?

From asking google various questions, i'm doubtful there is a solution.. . Being a former developer, its almost doable.. until realizing to be helpful, you'd likely want a full set of technical analysis tools for the chart.. baby's gone.

Thanks for any advice.

not really. there's probably a way, but if so it'd be some hokey black-magic way of doing it.

mt4 backtesting and using a multi-timeframe indicator to visualize a higher timeframe is one thing and do-able and has been done by many. mt4 backtesting and using a multi-timeframe indi to visualize AND place further objects onto the sub-window is not do-able due to the way the mtf indi has to keep recalculating the buffers to make the data stay aligned to the right while in reality each new candle is forcing any objects on the sub-window to drift to the left.

actually, that gives me an idea... i think it's entirely possible to create an mtf indi that simply forces all objects to the right one space each time a new candle opens, until the mtf indi needs to create a new candle as well in which case it can shift all objects one space to the left.

i think it IS do-able that an mtf indi can maintain things like trendlines and labels etc in it's correct positioning without it automatically drifting!!!

give me, and others enough time and i'm sure someone will drop a new indi that does this.

Hey nubcake, how about something like a (configurable) bollinger band and/or MACD for the extra price indicator?

Personally could live without the ability to overlay drawn lines etc.

Any links to the best price indicator atm would be much appreciated.

that's something else entirely... an mtf indicator is a hack to begin-with. i COULD write indicators that overlay onto my OWN mtf indi, but i have no desire to rewrite x number of other existing indicators just to make a version compatible with my mtf indi.

again, mtf indi's are hack-jobs of making something happen that mt4 wasn't implicitly designed to do, therefore, everything relating to them is further hack-jobs and bending the structure of how indicators are meant to work.

sorry.

on the plus-side, you have inspired me to rewrite my mtf indi and fix it up a little... and i have almost got it finished. and, as mentioned previously, you can now drop basic objects onto the indicator and they don't drift off the chart.

Yes this can be done.

Although, custom buttons are challenging in MT4...so a different solution for your "play button" would be probably be easier to implement.

Post the details of exactly what you are trying to do and I try to help you.

Well, might be onto something with nubcakes simulator ea.. as a solution to the problem i have multiple mt instances running and have automated pressing the play/pause button in each window.

Just in case there's a different and more better method, here's the idea:

- Looking for a manual backtesting solution. Should be able to place trades and fast forward through bars as required.
- Found nubcake strategy tester ea, which is perfect, except for only working with 1 price chart for test.
- Seems the idea of more than one chart per ea isn't really supported in mt, others at best have been using a custom indicator which prepopulated price data.

... Thinking about it, not an expert with Ea's or mt's api's and the like, but facilitating manual trade testing/execution probably isn't what the strategy tester is best designed for?

Just something that allows price data playback (and trade simulation) that allows for more than one price chart to be 'played back'. To support time frames.. ideally the speed of each of these charts should be adjustable also.

Don't have my hopes up

Here's one alternative method:

- I do not use Strategy Tester, as you have found, it is too restrictive.

- I have a script that acts as my quote server. It reads Tick data from my repository (or any timeframe for that matter - depending on the strategy, I sometimes will use M1 or M5 data) and creates the charts needed for the strategy to be tested. These are offline charts that "can" behave just like normal charts if used correctly. This simulator will create as many charts as needed for the strategy and any kind of chart (time, grid, range bar, tick). It will also create baskets of pairs with any chart type for testing basket strategies.

The simulator script has play, pause, stop, and speed controls. It also can be run in visual mode or not (non-visual mode is much faster).

- If I want to test visually (paper trading), I will add the applicable indicators to the chart(s) and proceed from there.

- If i want to test an EA, I will add the EA to the one of the offline charts. However, since we are in a simulated environment, I need to tell the EA to use the simulator's trading server. So, I simply set a user input on the EA to Simulator mode. Depending on the strategy, the EA may need some other tweaks to run in the environment, but this does not happen too often.

So far it works well. You can step through one tick (or bar) at a time to get a good feel for the previous performance.

This sounds like it is a little different than what you are looking to do within Strategy Tester using Nubcakes EA. Hopefully, you will find a solution that completely meets your requirements. Just keep in mind, using something outside of Strategy Tester might be your best choice.

Good luck!

Hi traders,

I am re-activating this thread because I have an important question to ask...

I was wondering if any of you know if it is possible to backtest multiple currency pairs at a time in MT4? I don't think it is, but I just want to be sure.

I am developing a simple piece of code that tells you what currency or currencies are trending the most. If it happens to be GBP/USD, then I want to it to backtest using data for G/U. But if it happens to be USD/JPY, then it should backtest using data for U/J, and so on.

I know MT4 asks you what pair you want to run the backtest for, but is it still possible to pull (accurate) data for other pairs that are not specified in the settings/parameters? The main information I am looking for is the price and a few indicator values... but, again, for different and/or multiple currencies (at the same time).

Also, how and where does the history fit into this equation? Will I need to update my brokers data feed?

Just to be clear... please consider this example. Let's say you select GBP/USD as the symbol for your backtest, but you want to pull the current price (ie: M1 data, candle[0]) for G/U, U/J, G/J, A/U, E/J... and more... for a given point in time, like 1:32 PM (or 13:32 hours). Can you do this? And will the price update accordingly, every minute, for all the pairs... even though you have specified just one in the settings?

I hope that makes sense, and please let me know if you have an answer. Also, I will catch up more on this thread this weekend. Thanks.