Computers are not second nature to me but I have a need to test a strategy in a certain way. Forex Tester is highly praised and rated but is it easy to use - or do they have lots of help areas or people to call? I would appreciate comments from those who have it or used it.
Thank you. D.
Forex Tester has a free trial you can download from their website. Get that and you can see if it’s too complicated for you to use before you buy it.
I tested it out before and it was a nice piece of software, but I still prefer scrolling my MT4 charts back and testing things myself. It’s free and I know it’s reliable, but it does take a lot of time…
I agree with phil. Something that auto-tests is nice but if you spend the time to scroll you not only see how your trading plan performs but may also find several instances where it doesn’t work because of specific factors.
Knowing this, you can then refine your system to not take those kinds of trades even if it looks good.
That’s what I’ve done with my strategy and have worked out several kinks that have kept me in the green.
Thank you both. As I am learning & using a Daily swing strategy perhaps scrolling and looking is easier and more reliable to boot. I am using Nial Fuller’s D. pin bar reversal, picked up from his free videos, but stop loss setting has been a particular problem. I’ll learn to read the scrolls and go from there . thanks again, d
try out vhands trading simulator its free and very similar to fx tester
Thank you Hess
Hello, didn’t mean to resurrect a dead thread, but wanted to give a thumbs-up on Forex Tester software. I used the free trial for awhile and then determined it was a tool I had to have. It went on sale for about 25% off I think around Christmas and I snagged it.
I do not use Forex Tester for automated testing, although I understand it can do that to some degree. I am primarily a price-action trader and I like FT for its ability to simulate the market in a way that can’t be done with just Metatrader.
I believe with FT software, you can “forward test” in a sense, because you are simulating live market activity without knowledge of what comes next. After loading tickdata, you can step forward in a highly realistic way and actually place trades as if on a real broker platform. From bar to bar there is some missing information (for example, ticks occurring in the same bar) so the software can randomize this for better simulation. (hope I’m explaining that right)
As a price-action trader, I work mostly with the higher timeframes and prefer to use FT in a manual mode where I am advancing the bars myself (it lets you choose the speed of the advancement… so I can advance every 5 minutes at a time, or even tick by tick). But for short term traders and scalpers, you can put it on auto-fire mode and it will advance at any speed you are comfortable with. For example you could set it to fire bars at you at the same speed they normally appear in the live market.
The other advantage to FT software, as I understand, is that if you do program the auto-tester (note: may require some high-level programming skills, I’m not sure – I don’t use it) … it can take into account an entire portfolio. I think MT4 can only test 1 pair at a time. So in the case of automated backtesting, it is helpful to see the global view of the portfolio with potentially multiple strategies executing simultaneously.
The other thing I really like about FT is that the author has made it extremely similar to MT4 in functionality, so there is very little learning curve. It also has an active support forum.
There ya go… off my soapbox. Just wanted to throw in my 2cents that I think it’s a decent software and worth the ~$100 if you are serious about testing. I was greatly disheartened awhile back at what appeared to be “manipulation” by Metaquotes with regard to the use of tickdata in their Strategy Tester feature. At that time, I stopped using MT4 for backtesting altogether based on what I felt was a lack of data integrity.
PS: I haven’t heard of the other product mentioned in the above reply, I will check it out.
Agreed with Dusktrader, but from my experience there is something about vhands…
Well, some people used VHands before trying FX tester, after that - no way. 
Just try to play a little with it. First of all - you can run Vhands only inside poor MT strategy tester that means you can not test more then 1 currency pair at a time, while in FX tester you can test as many pairs (and timeframes) as you want simultaneously, also you can let it run tick by tick with regulated speed, stop and return back with restoring previous trades and much more.
Also FX tester has more reliable backtester, where you can test multiple experts at the same time for multiple currencies, that Meta Trader can’t do.
Hey, if you are interested in Forex testing and especially the best testing tool ever - Forex Tester 2 as it was mentioned above, check www.forextesting.com - you can find Forex Tester 2 introduction, tips, how to and even special promotion discount.
It’s really nice suggestion for me
Hi Bvatum
If you are really interest in buying Forex Tester 2, I think you should take action now, because some weeks ago I, and I’m a using Forex tester, I received a mail with special offer because they had some kind of aniversary of their company. So if you intend to buy it, just a reason to decide on short term!!
Hope that the MOB’s do not qualify this as adverticing!! Because it really isn’t. It is really not my intention. I was penalized earlier.
See my profile for the infraction!