My first post here so hopefully everyone goes easy on my answer If you can computer code, you can write your trading strategy as an expert advisor (a robot) and back test it on years of data. You can do this on a meta trader 4 or 5 platform. Pretty much every broker has meta trader. So, it’s not straightforward learning coding and writing an expert advisor but can be done, I am teaching myself and am writing expert advisors now and back testing them. I am still doing this on a demo account by the way as I am still pretty new to trading. Learning to code an expert advisor if you don’t have a coding background is not easy and can take quite a while to learn, but I have found it fun so far, maybe I am a bit of a nerd at heart.
fun is one thing, but if you’re doing this with a view to income, i respectfully but strongly advise you (as some others will, also) not to try to program/automate anything until after you’ve traded profitably manually for a while
I am using demo account. I won’t trade real money until I can prove to myself that I can make money on a demo account. It’s all good, I have a good job that I’m not planning to leave any time soon, so I am in no rush to make money trading fires. it’s still a hobby for me and I have lots to learn. I just find coding EAs fun and I find the ability to back test your trading strategy invaluable. Also, the data you get from it can be analysed, I have started to do it through excel. Doing this allows you to analyse your strategy for numerous attributes… I am no expert by any stretch, but I can see the possibilities with Expert Advisors, data is king lol, just need to know what to do with it
for me, running an EA in a MT4 strategy tester using tick data is the only way to test a strategy, other than live demo testing but this obviously takes considerably longer.
I’m involved in copy trading and when it comes to testing different leaders’ strategies, I rely on Zulutrade’s Simulator tool. It allows me to easily test how their strategies performed in the past. Before I follow and copy their trades, I just make sure they align with my goals. And this tool has got my back on that front.
Who uses what kind of computer for backtesting? When running many expert advisors, you need a good processor and a lot of memory. My MacBook can’t handle this task… Are there any hosting services where you can rent a powerful AMD with lots of cores? A dedicated computer rather than a virtual machine where the processor power is shared with other users…
pull up a chart and say i would done this here and then this and then that and the result would have been this or that… do that over and over and track the profit or loss you would have made, and then tweal something about your process and backtest that alternative version on the same data you tested version1 on
For backtesting, I usually pick a currency pair based on my own strategies, then I go back through historical charts to see how my strategy would’ve performed in the past. Honestly, it can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re not super confident yet—so take it slow.
If you can computer code, you can write your trading strategy as an expert advisor (a robot) and back test it on years of data. You can do this on a meta trader 4 or 5 platform. Pretty much every broker has meta trader. So, it’s not straightforward learning coding and writing an expert advisor but can be done, I am teaching myself and am writing expert advisors now and back testing them. I am still doing this on a demo account by the way as I am still pretty new to trading. Learning to code an expert advisor if you don’t have a coding background is not easy and can take quite a while to learn, but I have found it fun so far, maybe I am a bit of a nerd at heart.
