How We Use MT4 to Test Trading Strategies

Have you ever wanted to create and find your own strategies that have data backed results that you can trust? This article is for you.

Trading strategies are concepts and strategies used to define a set of conditions or parameters that help the trader define when to get in and out of trades in the market. Conditions such as trend, price, volume, price action, indicators such as Bollinger bands and moving averages that offer insight into statistical data are all things that someone might use in a trading strategy.

In this article we are going to show you how we can help you define strategies and test them fast to work out whether the strategy is worth looking into further.

How Others Test Strategies

To see the value in what we offer, you first need some insight into how others test a strategy. Those that can code, run tests in the strategy tester which can take quite a bit of time to learn how to code, then understand the markets, understand and apply risk management and finally test the results to see if the strategy works. Other traders might follow a trading guru, who often use concepts that look good on paper, and are very believable, but do they stand the test of time? Traders without coding experience have to either manually backtest what looks to be the case now, in hindsight, which can often lead to false entries and exits on trades. Testing strategies in the market can be time consuming and tough on those traders that do not enjoy solving problems and running their own data.

The FXT Navigator changes this for our clients.

How You Can Test Strategies, Fast

You can test strategies and concepts within seconds, on a range of currency pairs (forex), cryptocurrencies, indices and commodities using the FXT Navigator, which plugs directly into the MT4 platform as an Expert Advisor (EA). Basically, this means you can drag and drop this software onto a chart, and test hundreds of strategies using the exact data you would trade from. The Screener function shows you range of options like Bollinger bands, moving average crossovers, losing and winning streaks on the timeframe you select and more. You set your parameters, run the test and within seconds you will have data on the trading strategy’s average and median direction following the signal and price % movement. There is also the amount of trades shown since the date it ran the test against.    

What Does This Mean For Traders?

Traders can use this software to determine not only the strategies that are working, but also the symbols or instruments that the strategy works well on. When you run the test, each symbol is tested in your MarketWatch so you can see where you could focus your attention with the strategy.   

What should you do?

Trading is better with data, and knowing what works is part of being successful as a trader. Head to the FXT Navigator page to learn more and start identifying data backed strategies that work across multiple symbols. Add to that, FXT offer a correlation matrix and rolling correlation charts to help you create a portfolio of currency pairs, index markets, crypto assets and commodities to work together over time.