How can you run automated trading when data goes missing? Account specific market data?

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This is really shaking my confidence in automated trading. I've attached a screen shot and part of my chat attempt to resolve this.

These are two demo accounts. I open the same AUDUSD 5min chart in account 756 and it appears normal. I open it in account 326 and data is missing from 5:15 May 6 through 2:15 May 8. I have done this at least three times now.

• I did not know that market data is somehow bound to the account. (See chat). Can anyone explain this? I have quit and restarted the Terminal, relogged into the account - the error stays with the account.

• Even when there is an error, why does opening a new chart not load the correct data? And only in the one account.

• How many more EA decisions were made with missing data? I found this only because when I pasted a custom indicator from one account to the other, the results were not the same. So I started to compare charts and found this. The EA and indicator could be working with much more, faulty data for all I know.

I run an EA overnight and the chat guy is telling me to download data I see missing, from history. Does this seem practical to anyone? What would be the point of an EA then? I don't get this.

Thanks in advance for any information!

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PS: My attempt to resolve this with chat support :

Lou: I open AUDUSD 5min chart in the account ending in 756 and it looks normal.

Lou: I do the same thing in the account ending 326 and The data stops at 5:10 on May 6 and does’t resume until 2:20 on May 8.

Lou: I've done this a couple of times now

Lou: The only difference seems to be the account

Aslan: Sometimes we run maintenance on our practice account servers so data might stop for that period.

Lou: I just opened these charts

Lou: minutes apart

Lou: you mean new data doesn't download?

Lou: I don't understand

Aslan: During maintenance data might stop for few minutes.

Lou: The data stops at 5:10 on May 6 and does’t resume until 2:20 on May 8

Lou: That's more than a few minutes

Aslan: If you have some missing data you can simply go to "Tools" > History Center" and then select your pair and download the data.

Lou: Why doesn't the data appear when I open a new chart?

Aslan: Maybe some data are missing in your practice. You could download it from the history center.

Lou: So I have to manually check charts to see if something is missing and then manually download what's missing? And do this for each account?

Aslan: This does not happen always.

Lou: It doesn't give me a great deal of faith in MT4 charts

Aslan: This does not happen always. If you see missing data, you can always download it from the history center.

 

change to a reliable broker

if you insist to stay with this particular broker

you can simply check every X seconds\minutes\hours if the data is updated

 

Each account has its own set of chart history data. Some is downloaded from the broker as historical data, some is created live while the terminal is connected to the brokers live price feed.

This is what I would do,

  • MT4 > File > Open Data Folder > History Folder > Your Account 326 Folder
  • Close MT4 Terminal, keep you chart history folder open.
  • Rename the AUDUSD5m.hst to AUDUSD5m.hst.old
  • Restart MT4
  • Log in to the 326 account
  • Open a AUDUSD 5m chart
  • MT4 should recieve new 5m chart history data from your broker
  • See if it is now the same as the other account
  • You can reverse this operation by again going to history folder, close MT4, delete the newly created 5m hst file, rename the .old one back to the original .hst file name
 

Thanks for the replies.

• I wrote a little routine into my custom indicator to locate gaps and am found one in a third account (maybe there were no ticks for five minutes?) and two in another. Nothing like the nearly two days missing from the first one, but the errors (since they vary I am calling them errors) remain with each account.

• I'm doing these demos with forex.com. Does anyone else share the opinion that they are not reliable?

• Can anyone answer the question as to what the account has to do with market data anyway? Why would one account see data that another does not?

• Has anyone else checked his data to find suchgaps? I wonder if this might not be happening to others who do not realize it?

If you are backtesting, this is going to screw you up.

Thanks again for the replies!

 

Some kind of error must have occured.

 

I'd bet that some of you would also find missing data if you checked. As I said, I came across this only by accident when I saw my CI was not providing the same results from one account to the other. I was running four demo account simultaneously and the others were not affected,so it was not a connectivity question.

MetaQuotes told me to hit Refresh, and the data was restored. But the question remains, how do I Refresh from MQL4 so that the data is automatically kept up to date? I assumed that MT4 was doing this automatically and I don't quite understand why it does not. Especially when you open a new chart.

Q: Is there a Refresh or other MQL4 command to correct bad data?

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