Historical data

Beginner Questions
1

I have been manually backtesting a trading strategy i have developed recently.I have tested about the previous 8 month’s data but the charts before 26 Jan 2012 ain’t available (i want to backtest minimum 5 years of data) i can’t scroll back my chart.I have downloaded the historical data from Forex Historical Data
but i don’t know how to implement this data on my charts to see the historical charts.Can anyone help me?

2

what software are you using. If MT4 then this is an easy fix.

  1. Go to Tools > Options > Chart

Set max mars in history to 9999999
Set max bars in chart to 9999999

  1. Go to Tools > History Center

Click the pair you want to load the historical data for
Double click the time frame you are interested in - double click is important
Then select download

  1. Re-start MT4 and the data will start to show its self, usually from as far back as 2000 for 15m TF and grater.
3

I have tried this way but when i click “download” a notification appears"There are no new data for the symbol ''GBPUSDmicro".Is there any alternative?

4

That is the case for TFs like M1. Well I have that problem with the M1 data.

You can make your own CSV-file and import it in the history center, but for that you first need the data. In the past there was a site at Alpari, but they stopped doing that. Unfortunately I have GAPS in my data…:S.

I have data before your date, but not for GBPUSD. Sorry.

Are people willing to share their history files in the hope to get data on their own GAPS as well?

5

I looked at the data you tried to download.

  1. I am suprised that you cannot download that from your broker as the site only offers hourly and daily. You should get almost a full history from your broker.
  2. The data-format of the download is not the same as MT4:
  • format downloaded file: Ticker; Date; Time; Open; Low; High; Close
  • format MT4: Time: Open; High; Low; Close; Volume
    So some work is needed.

What timeframe do you need. Perhaps I can make a hst file for you and share it with you.

6

Strange…I downloaded 1M and M1 data from as far back as June 1994 and it works perfectly fine through MT4.

7

You did? Hmmm, what did I miss than on that site? Thanks, gonna recheck it, because I am looking for that data as well. Did the data format not matter when importing Jezz?

Or do you mean downloading from your broker using MT4? Alpari only goes back 3 months. Perhaps Metaquotes gives more, butI haven’t downloaded that as the instance was connected to my live account and I didn’t want to mess things up. Perhaps I should try it on a demo-account/instance.

Thanks for the heads up!

8

Yes, I went through Tools>History Center

But before you do these settings have to be made


Without doing this the data will not be downloaded, or displayed on your charts.


And here is the proof from one of my testing MT4 platforms…

9

Jezz, I never doubted that it was true what you said…:slight_smile: I was just not able to download that far with my broker. So was hoping you got the M1 from the site you mentioned.