is anyone aware of the significance of the "mismatched charts errors" message during a backtest??[/QUOTE
Delete all history data in the history folder in your mt4 folder. Import new data from link.
Look at this link
http://forextester.com/data/datasources.html
Download required files.
File/Open Offline, open whichever currency you imported 1 minute.
Run period converter script in mt4. Check Allow DLL IMports, uncheck Confirm DLLfunction calls. Change Ext Period Multiplier eg 15 minutes = 15.
Run it for 1, 5, 15, 30, 60, 240 and 1140.
Check Experts tab for progress takes 1-2 minutes.
Then you will have 90% Modelling quality and no mismatched errors.
Do it for all currencies you need, delete all crap **** data ypou currently have in your files first all the .hst files.
Cobber
Hi Copper,
I have a lot of experience with back tests. Therefore all who are doing great backtests, showing super performance, have to know, that most of these backtest are garbage.
Yes it is possible to create even a 99% modelling quality. But you need the best data on 1 min or even better tick base.
The question is where to get it from? One source is the mentioned one (forextester) and I used it different times. But I'm still not convinced that this data are ok.
For example I used it to make a backtest for 2010. Unfortunately the result was very disappointing.
with ForexTest data: Profit -
5733 USD, DD 60%
with MetaQuote Data: Profit 8595 USD, DD 6.5%
Same settings of course.
I guess most of the users here are using the MetaQuote data. Forget it, they are not reliable. E.g. I found just by good luck 2 weeks missing data (15 Oct. 2010 22:45 last data, next 10 days later 01. Nov. 2010, 14:45). I'm pretty sure that there are more data holes. So don't even play with these data.
I "believe" that I have some reliable data from 11 Nov until 30 Nov 2010.
I performend a backtest in this periode with 6 brokers:
Alpari (live): 10 trades, profit 126.50 USD
Alpari (MetaQuote Data): 10 trades, profit 116.98 USD
Alpari (ForexTester data): 10 trades, profit 95 USD
MIG (live): 10 trades, profit 127.50 USD
ATC (demo): 9 trades, profit 228 USD
ATC (live): 10 trades, profit 210 USD
Although the number of trades are almost the same (10) the profits vary substantially.
In order to make as much as possible reliable and comparable backtests we need first of all good data. Of course there are some sources available, but usually you have to buy them. This would be a possibility if we could share it.
Another source is DukasCopy.
http://www.dukascopy.com/plugins/fxMarketWatch/
I personally believe that they are very reliable, although not perfect. The only problem is, that it is kind of difficult to download the data. You have to do it day by day and than to put all data together. But because we have here some members who are good in programming maybe there is a way to get these data and make them for all available.
But even than backtests and real results are still different due to internet speed, ping time, order execution, unreliable brokers, etc.
To see how reliable data are, some of us could do the following test:
I read that some are running this system with the standard setting already for some months.
Please can you do a backtest with the same settings and compare the live results with the backtest results. This would be an eye opener.
May be there are also some other ideas.
Just my thoughts on backtests.
Antomi