New Way to Get More MetaTrader Price Data

If you do any back testing using the Strategy Tester, you may be interested in this.

If you don’t already know, the Strategy Tester is a back tester that comes with MetaTrader (MT).  To find it in your MT platform,  go to the View tab and select Strategy Tester.

Used to be when you needed more historical data you just pressed the PageUp key on your keyboard.

Pressing the PageUp key scrolled back through time on your chart. When you hit the point where you had no more price data, your MT platform would connect to your broker’s server and load more data.

For example, suppose you opened a 1 minute EURUSD chart and pressed the PageUp key.  It might go back to about 2 weeks ago and stop.  Then you’d press the PageUp key a few times and it would load more data.

It doesn’t work like that anymore.  I’m not sure why, but it’s not a big deal.  There’s another way that’s just as easy.

In your MT platform, go to the Tools tab and select History Center.  This opens a window that shows all of your available Symbols.

Expand the Forex menu, choose your Symbol and press the Download button.

This will download all of the price data available for that Symbol and Timeframe.   The download may take a while –  it  depends on your network connection.

I’ve posted some screenshots of this on the forum.

Here is the link:

http://www.iexpertadvisor.com/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=221#post654

Note:  If you have a live account and need more data, don’t be afraid to ask your broker.  I’ve been able to get tick data for some currencies just by asking (nicely).