Sure, let me know when you have PM privileges granted.
Thanks Monsterer!
Downloading data as we speak!
Great! Thanks! I will try to figure out how to make that happen!
I believe it’s just a matter of post count.
The key is not to just backtest, but to forward test!!
And what is wrong with backtesting a system try and estimate it’s potential returns or lack thereof?
Nothing, but i said to backtest AND forward test, its important to see if your system stands up in live market conditions.
Fair enough, weird sentence structure.
It’s been a few days now and I have downloaded some data on Tickstory Lite (it didn’t take this long - but it did take a while!) I have read online about opening another offline MT4 platform for backtesting - Is that the best way? Also how do you get the Tickstory Lite data into MT4? I clicked ‘export to Mt4’ and chose the folder etc. but when in MT4 history center I don’t see all the new data…? Any suggestions?
Thanks!
I did do some backtesting with the data available on MT4 and immediately saw problems - unless my new EA is really going to never lose… I wish!
First thing to do is to locate your newly exported tick data in the tester/history directory and write protect it - you should see a bunch of huge files all of the same file-size with the symbol name you exported. If you don’t its possible that MT4 has overwritten them again 
In order to prevent MT4 from overwriting your exported data, you must only launch MT4 from the tickstory menu option (make sure you’ve told tickstory where your mt4 is installed first). Doing things this way means tickstory can patch the .exe to make things work correctly.
Launching MT4 by itself without tickstory will not give you access to your downloaded data.
Hope that helps,
Cheers, Paul.
I see many systems and EAs described here, but it seems almost none has included an equity curve or performance sheet from a backtest. I wonder if people really trade untested systems? How can you know that it is profitable without a backtest over at least 4 years? An in-sample backtest is no guarantee for profit, but a missing backtest seems to me a certain recipe for loss.
Thanks for the tips! That did help :). Backtesting seems to be working great now - modeling quality at 99.9%. It takes a very long time for downloading the Tickstory data and for running the test in MT4 but I think that is just this old beast of a laptop I have… Doesn’t seem like there is any better/easier way right?. I did see that there is an online backtesting service out there on the internet but I think it was a website posted to see if there was actual interest in such a thing - not an up an running business.
Thanks again for your help!