I would like to backtest a system I’ve made in MT4… So I can get used to MT4 platform at the same time.
The only thing I know how to do is pressing F12 to step one bar forward.
But it’s so complicated to move around in time. I tried pressing enter and then entering a date but it doesn’t seem to work for me. Also when I change time frame (trend finding etc) then my my location seems to change (the date)… That I had scrolled back to.
This is so complicated.
I’ve also made an excel journal to write down the trades in but do you know of any better way?
Also, I only want to backtest during certain hours that I would trade live as well… (12pm - 17pm GMT).
But that would be simply going forward I guess but I just mentioned it in case there are better methods.
Thanks for the link, It had some interesting EA’s… I was also thinking of trying out LFH Trade Simulator.
But I read that you can’t change time frames while using the EA.
This is probably my biggest concern with backtesting.
When backtesting my systems… you still have to check what the trend is on higher TF…
But when you switch to the higher TF (without EA) you will not be at the same date anymore… you will see ahead of where you were.
And I can imagine that there is a similar problem with the EA… Even if I start two of those Simulator EA’s in two different charts… It’s going to be extremely tricky to for example make the 5m tf and hourly tf synchronized… Because if they are making new bars at the same time then it’s not synced… Because the 5m tf needs to make 12 bars before the hourly tf makes 1.
I just don’t understand how everyone is doing their manual backtesting… And it’s so popular too.
EVERYWHERE there is talk about a system they always talk about backtesting.
I haven’t tried LFH for a while, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t change time frames. And that would suck.
I guess the best way to work around that might be open the pair in another window, in another time frame, and just hope you don’t go too far and accidentally see the future and ruin your test.
The other window could be with the EA running in it, and you might be able to set the speeds different to sync them. For example, set your 1H window to a certain speed, and then set you 15M window 4 times as fast. That would mean you would have to figure out how the heck the speeds are measured. The max speed is 32. But 32 whats per what?
Or maybe the second window is a regular window without the EA and you hit F12 to step forward.
Either way is going to be imperfect.
It is pretty frustrating how back testing so important, yet where is the decent solution? And you are right, everybody talks about backtesting as if they have a good backtesting system, yet nobody specificly says how they backtest. I wonder if they don’t have a good way to back test and they may even just be eyeballing it.
What’s more frustrating is with all the amazing software and scripts people have made, where the $*#% is a decent backtest script?
So far, LFH is the best solution I’ve found, and it’s a lot better than eyeballing it. Hopefully someone chimes in with a better solution.
Hi! Newbie here. I would like to do a manual backtesting using MT4. I’d like to ask if there is any way i can hide the most recent candles or just have certain period of time shown. The reason I want this is because I am using Ichimoku Kinko Hyo and i need to see the future kumo without seeing the recent candles.
