This short post is a quick “how-to” guide aimed at helping you utilize TickStory Lite software to download historical tick data and perform high quality backtests on RangeBars, Renko, MedianRenko, or PoitO charts. In order to prepare the necessary data, you’ll need an MT4 terminal, TickStory, and a custom CSV2FXT script (included in all PRO versions) for the corresponding custom charting plug-in that you wish to use.
When you first download TickStory, you’ll need to configure it – select “Settings” from the File menu and go to the “MT4 Settings” tab:
First click on the “Select…” button to the right of “MT4 Installation”, to choose the MT4 terminal that will be used to perform backtests. Once you do that, the corresponding “MT4 Data Folder” and “Server name” will be detected. You can, of course, modify these settings.
Next, you’ll need to copy your “MT4 Data Folder” path to the clipboard, as it will be needed in one of the following steps. This can be conveniently done, by pressing “Select…” next to the “MT4 Data Folder” path. You’ll be presented with the following window and you can copy the selected data folder path from the highlighted text box.
Now simply close the settings windows and select the desired symbol for testing. Right-click on it and choose “Export to file…”.
Now, you’ll need to complete the setup procedure using the presented “Export to file” dialog.
Make sure that “Tick” is selected as the “Timeframe” and the output format is set to “Birt’s CSV2FXT Format“. Next, in the output file name text box, paste the copied data folder path right before the {Symbol} macro. Now add “\MQL4\Files\” between the pasted data folder path and the “{Symbol}.csv” string. This step is important because it will ensure that all downloaded tick data is placed into the files folder in Metatrader and can be directly accessed by the custom CSV2FXT scripts.
When you press OK, the download process will begin and the resulting CSV file will be written to the selected Metatrader’s data files subfolder.
When the download process finishes, you’ll need to start MT4 and convert the downloaded CSV file to the corresponding HST/FXT pair (this is outlined in Step2 of the backtesting guide.).
Once done, you’ll need to use the MT4 launcher feature, which is conveniently built into the program:
When MT4 starts, backtesting can be performed by bringing up the strategy tester window (Ctrl-R) in Metatrader and setting the following parameters:
Expert Advisor – set this to the name of your EA, which has been modified in the previous step,
Symbol – set this to EURUSD (as we’ve downloaded and prepared the tick data for this symbol)
Period – set this to M1 (all backtesting using price based charts will be performed on the M1 period)
Model – set this to Every Tick
Visual mode – check this box, if you wish to view the chart as your EA is being backtested
The backtest will begin once you press [Start]
NOV
2014
