I am learning basic chart usage and have run into a slight road block. I would like to go back “in time” and examime historical candle data in shrot time frames, e.g. look at a 5 minute chart from july 2009. I am using a Netdania and if I select a monthly chart, scroll back to July 2009, then select “5 min”, it defaults back to the current time and date. There must be an easy way to look at historic data, in a small time frame, without “scrolling” backwards through two years of data in a 5 minute chart.
Thanks in advance.
Greg
I’m not sure any platform will allow you to go that far back on a 5m chart…1 year data should be good enough to test a 5m strategy IMO.
Some data providers have tick data available as far back as 2001 for sale. I am not familiar with Netdania but do they use MT4? If they do you can download the tick data as far back as you want (if they have it) and then load it into the platform.
Also, MT4 has an option to select a date (if that is the platform you use): Press Enter and type in your date as :MM/DD/YYYY and enter again and it will automatically jump to that time so you do not have to scroll through.
As others have said, Metatrader 4 can do it, but you might need to download and import history data.
I think with some brokers, you can download history data within metatrader tools>history center. You may have to download 1M and compile the other time frames from the 1M data. Can’t remember exactly how to compile, but there are instructions in the links below.
Or you may have to download 1M data from another source, and import and compile it manually.
Free 1M history data here:
Forex Tester Software - Data Sources
It’s quiet complicated how to import the data. Instructions at these two sites:
How to Achieve 90% Modeling Quality back testing with MT4 ‹ Forex Trading Tools – MT4 Indicators – MT4 Experts – Metatrader Tools
How To Set Up Metatrader History Data And Get 90% Backtesting Quality - The Trade Machine Blog
I have to disagree with that, 1 year is not sufficient to test a strategy on any timeframe. Currency pairs behavior varies over the years. I’ve noticed a lot of EAs I’ve built work great for certain years, and horrible other years. I’ve yet to build an EA that works well for more than 3 years in a row.
Agree with RainMan, 1 year will give you a lot of trades on the 5 min chart but it does not give an accurate view of the strategy because market conditions change over the course of time and you need to try to test the system in different conditions to see how it holds up.
What i see is that when we go back and look at the past data then we are able to get valuable insights into how much volatility was triggered by a particular news.
A mention of the Non farm Payrolls is an ideal example 