Discussion of article "Creating and testing custom symbols in MetaTrader 5"

[MetaQuotes]

New article Creating and testing custom symbols in MetaTrader 5 has been published:

Creating custom symbols pushes the boundaries in the development of trading systems and financial market analysis. Now traders are able to plot charts and test trading strategies on an unlimited number of financial instruments.

Creating a custom symbol

Let's create a custom symbol based on the one already present in the Market Watch. Open the Symbols window by the right mouse button and select the one you would like to use to create a custom symbol.

After clicking "Create Custom Symbol", set its name and change the required parameters in the contract specification if necessary.

All custom symbols are placed to the separate <Custom> directory of the Symbols tree and are always located there regardless of a broker you are currently connected to. Price data of custom symbols are saved in a separate Custom directory outside of the directories where data of trade servers are stored:

C:\Users\[windows account]\AppData\Roaming\MetaQuotes\Terminal\[instance id]\bases\Custom

This is another advantage of creating a custom symbol — you can simply copy the necessary symbols from each broker to your custom group. Just like conventional symbols, you can delete a custom symbol only if there are no open charts with it and it is not present in the Market Watch.

Author: MetaQuotes Software Corp.

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Does anyone know how to run strategy tester with imported tick data on custom symbol?

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If this is not a right forum to post, kindly suggest the appropriate forum so i can move it ; )

I am using MT5 version: 5.00 build 1795 (03 Apr 2018) on Win7.

Trying to run strategy tester with custom symbol which only has imported tick data.

According to the instruction on MQL website in below, ref:https://www.mql5.com/en/articles/3540 , strategy tester can run just with imported tick data and do not need imported minute data.

But when I try this with recent version of MT5, I could not get it running.

One thing I find is in new version of strategy tester, comparing with above old strategy tester, new one has dropdown box (circle in red) to select the minute data and lowest is "M1" and it doesn't have "Tick".

Therefore, when I import tick data into custom symbol (without minute data), I get below error.

Does anyone know how to run strategy tester with imported tick data on custom symbol?

Below is steps what I have done.

1. in Symbol window -> Tick tab, exported recent 1 week tick data from USDJPY

2. in Symbol window -> Specification tab, create a custom symbol (named USDJPY.custom)

3. in Symbol window -> Tick tab, import step 1 tick data into USDJPY.custom

4. in strategy tester, selected USDJPY.custom, select every tick based on real tick and select M1 (as i need to select something)

5. in strategy tester window, it complain it can't find M1 data...

I believe I read that MT5 will generate minute data from tick data if tick data is available. has the requirement changed for testing in tick data, need also min. of M1 data?

 

kind regards,

Soi

[fxsaber]

soi kawasaki:

I believe I read that MT5 will generate minute data from tick data if tick data is available.

It's not true!

#property script_show_inputs

#include <fxsaber\ThirdPartyTicks\CustomSymbol.mqh> // https://www.mql5.com/ru/code/20225

// Generate M1-history from ticks
void OnStart()
{  
  MqlTick Ticks[];
  CUSTOMSYMBOL Symb;

  if (Symb.IsCustom() && (CopyTicksRange(Symb.Name, Ticks, COPY_TICKS_ALL, 0, LONG_MAX) > 0))
  {
    Symb.AddTicks(Ticks);
  
    Symb.CreateHistoryRates();
    
    ChartOpen(Symb.Name, PERIOD_CURRENT);
  }
}

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fxsaber:

It's not true!

Hi fxsaber,

Thank you for sharing this!

Hi Alain Verleyen,

Apology for double posting, was going to delete it later but seems like i can't. will not do from next time : )

[Yang Chih Chou]

Can it possible to test multi-currency in MT5 with custom symbols.