All forward testing on Metatrader is flawed - page 4

 

How to fix this situation?

There are some library files. It is on Metaquotes codebase somewhere. Еhose library files are controlliтg something as "trade contest is busy", files are filling the gaps if some bar is missing and so on. So, the situation may be fixed (but not completely).

I think the real traders had D1 bar on North Finance because:

- real data and demo data may be slightly different sometimes;

- real data is always better then demo one;

- NF broker is having a lot of clients and still no any noise from them so I think NF traders had this D1 bar.

By the way I can not check the real data as I do not have real account with NF sorry.

 
el cid:

N D

If you go to broker with micro lots 0.01 you will get easy fills.Go with $100k to $10m and you get different price fills

So forward testing is no perfect but probably 80 % of real account

AND I am in full agreement about backtesting as being flawed and useless

Regards

El CID

Some problem with quoting the posts ... We are quoting by ourselves

 
newdigital:

It's up to you.

By the way it is good point you arised concerning forward testing.

But forward testing only is more closer to reality.

Backtesting is nothing.

What is reality? Reality is trading by EA with real money.

And if someone is having the problem with forward testing because of the brokers data or any so it can be fixed by himself only if he is holder of source code. No one know about how it was coded so sorry ...

N D

If you go to broker with micro lots 0.01 you will get easy fills.Go with $100k to $10m and you get different price fills

So forward testing is no perfect but probably 80 % of real account

AND I am in full agreement about backtesting as being flawed and useless

Regards

El CID

 
el cid:

No

Because the fills you get on real account are different depending on each broker's liquidity and question of requotes

No person in his right mind is going to give out source codes , because there is bad history about source codes which has been deleted from threads.

Regards

El

It's up to you.

By the way it is good point you arised concerning forward testing.

But forward testing only is more closer to reality.

Backtesting is nothing.

What is reality? Reality is trading by EA with real money.

And if someone is having the problem with forward testing because of the brokers data or any so it can be fixed by himself only if he is holder of source code. No one know about how it was coded so sorry ...

 
newdigital:
I think this thread may be renamed to the following:

"All backtesting testing on Metatrader is flawed"

--------------

Sometimes some EA is showing different results during the backtesting and forward testing. And sometimes we may ask the coder: "why?". In many cases the coder will say "i don't know" and he will spend many hour just to understand why. It is concerning EA with open source code.

No

Because the fills you get on real account are different depending on each broker's liquidity and question of requotes

No person in his right mind is going to give out source codes , because there is bad history about source codes which has been deleted from threads.

Regards

El

 
el cid:
Jlpi

They are flawed because they are not perfect .A diamond might be good but it isn't perfect if it has flaws.It is still a diamond

flawed - definition of flawed by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

If these bucket shops mess with data feeds on real accounts and they do ,then the forward tests are flawed.They are only forward tests but flawed forward tests.

How do requotes come into the forward tests if they are not executed?In real accounts many trades are not executed.So this forward testing is flawed.

How does new time spreads widening come into the forward tests?These are not included in historical data.The spread may be widened higher than the price your order was executed at .This is not accounted for in back tests and does not give clearer picture of the true market spread used on forward tests.

El cid

I will not argue about english as it is not at all my mother language but for me at least flawed sounds worst than not perfect. But I am then probably wrong.

If everything that is not perfect is flawed then almost everything is flawed.

Should we open a thread "El Cid is flawed"

I think that we have better to do in our lives than to criticize everything.

It is up to you to be smart enough to deal with the current environment.

 

Backtesting Is Nothing?

Hi Newdigital,El Cid

I don`t agree with you that backtesting is nothing,I would say that it is not everything,for sure ..but that it is a necessary precondition for trading any system/method/EA.

Why?..Because you can forward test your trend following EA like crazy for months,and be extremely profitable,just because you are trading in a very favourable environment..And account loss is waiting there,just at the turn of the corner..the moment the trending environment turns into a range trading one..your Account is dead.

The only way to approximate how your EA is going to behave long term,with trending and ranging environments is to backtest for a very long period,with the following preconditions..

1-The backtested period should contain both trending and ranging subperiods

2-Once you optimize the settings of your EA/method/strategy..you should backtest again,without modifying these settings,on an OUT OF SAMPLE different period,that should contain both trending and ranging markets too,and this out of sample results will give you a fairer idea about your SYSTEM POTENTIAL,both in returns and Drawdown,than what you got at the optimization phase..it is usually a reality shock

3-You should backtest(and trade ) at a fairly liquid broker database,after checking that deviations between demo and live datafeeds are minimal..FXDD,as OceanFx rightly pointed out,is the perfect example..though not the only one

4-The optimal settings found in the IN SAMPLE testing should stand a "common sense" test..ie if your MA crossover optimal is 5/25..the suboptimal settings should be "near and similar"..ie..6/25,4/24,etc..if there are considerable differences in backtesting results from very near settings,the test is flawed..just throw it to the trash bin

Then,and only then ,you can start forward testing or trading your system with a minimum expected edge..and no guarantee at all that you will make it ..but this is how the markets work

Of course,if somebody backtests IN SAMPLE only,with a non representative sample,overoptimizing the settings,at an illiquid broker,with extreme differences between live and demo datafeeds..I agree with you,then backtesting is nothing...

Regards

Simba

 
el cid:

N D

If you go to broker with micro lots 0.01 you will get easy fills.Go with $100k to $10m and you get different price fills

So forward testing is no perfect but probably 80 % of real account

AND I am in full agreement about backtesting as being flawed and useless

Regards

El CID

Real data and demo data are the same or slightly different:

- or real data is the same one with demo;

- or real data is better than demo (less spiky and so on).

Real trading is different from demo with order executing time. For example, it is forward statement of public Firebird EA on demo account (attached). And I don't think that those trades (see attachments) will be possible on real account: too many orders are opened in very short period of time. May be possible, may be not - I did not try.

Because Metarader can do one thing only. MetaTrader can not do 2 things simultamiously. If you tell to Metatrader:

"open the buy order for EA #1 and modify the order for EA #2" so Metatrader will get stucked: Metatrader will not know about what to do first.

And because of that people who are testing more than 4 charts or more than 2 EAs in one copy of Metatrader are having special library files just to "speak" with Metatrader. Those files are managing all those subject and fixing all the problems with Metatraders.

But if we are testing just 1 or 2 EAs in one copy of Metatrader which is not trading often for timeframe more than M15 for example so it will not be a problem.

It may be problem is we are trading one EA with 17 charts and EA is trading often so it will be real problem with real account.

Files:
 

Simba

Thank you for your advice.

One type of market condition that needs to be tested is where the market is neither ranging nor trending ..............sort of inbetween both .

Backtesting on longer time frames with data from a liquid broker and where system uses no indicators can be fairly reliable.Most of my systems are without indicators and on longer time frames

I am struggling to get any profitable strategies from backtesting on lower time frames

regards

El Cid

 

I believe if we do backtest on higher timeframe we'll get higher reliability result. I have an EA which working on 4H timeframe, coding on open bar. I have forward testing it for about 1,5 month. When I backtest it on the same period, the result is almost indentical, unfortunately it's a hard period on my EA after long profitable months (on backtest of course ).

So my conclusion so far, backtest is not completely useless imho.