Accessing cross-pair quote information from the tester

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I have a testing situation where I wish to compute the pip value for a symbol pair. My account is USD denominated so this is not problem when running a test.

However, when I have a cross-pair - such as EUR/NOK - I need access to the USD/NOK pair quote to compute the pip value for EUR/NOK - via USD/NOK.

Any attempt to access bid or ask for USD/NOK when testing against EUR/NOK yields a zero result - indicating that the USD/NOK quotes are not loaded.

(I am using MarketInfo to attempt to access the quote information for USD/NOK).

Is this an inherent limitation of the tester - you can only get quote information for the symbol being tested? Or is there some other way to reach out to another symbol from the tester?

My alternative is to write an indicator to read and store historical quote information into files and access the files from the tester.

Thanks

Michael

[gordon]

mlr94549:

Is this an inherent limitation of the tester - you can only get quote information for the symbol being tested?

Yes it is. From the article "Testing Features and Limits in MetaTrader 4":

Using of MarketInfo function generates error ERR_FUNCTION_NOT_ALLOWED_IN_TESTING_MODE(4059), however, correct information about current prices for the symbol under test, about stop level dimensions, about point size, about spread size of any symbol being present in the quotes window is provided.

My alternative is to write an indicator to read and store historical quote information into files and access the files from the tester.

Getting the info from an external file is the way to go. Note that the history folder is accessible via file functions, hence u can read other symbol's data directly (file structure of *.HST files is known and documented). This might potentially slow down the Testing process considerably.

[[Deleted]]

gordon:

Yes it is. From the article "Testing Features and Limits in MetaTrader 4":

Getting the info from an external file is the way to go. Note that the history folder is accessible via file functions, hence u can read other symbol's data directly (file structure of *.HST files is known and documented). This might potentially slow down the Testing process considerably.

Gordon:

Many thanks. Guess I'll go read up on the *.hst structure and crank some code. Speed is what it is; accuracy is more valuable. I only make decisions about stops on the first tick of any bar, so there is not that great a load on system.

Thanks you for taking the time to respond, and for responding so quickly.

Michael