Having trouble with strategy tester on MT4...

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When I run a backtest, it seems to give me the results, which I will just assume are accurate because I have no way to verify. I would think it should give me a detail of every time that it entered and exited the trade during the time period, but I guess not?

This example says 1 "pass" (what is a "pass"?) for a total of 75 trades and a profit factor of 1.90.


The Optimization Graph has just a single point that is the initial deposit plus the profit.


This backtest was for 1 year, so a profit of $151.46 on initial deposit of $10,000 would be a ROI of 1.5146%. Where do I see this in my results? What exactly is "profit factor" and "expected payoff"?


How do I get the timeline graph and detail of every trade?

Files:
st1.jpg  218 kb
st2.jpg  303 kb
 
farmerjohn: When I run a backtest, 
If you see pass/profit factor etc., you are not doing a back test. You are doing an optimization of parameters. Optimization
 
William Roeder:
If you see pass/profit factor etc., you are not doing a back test. You are doing an optimization of parameters.

Ok, I see. Thank you.


Now when I unchecked that, it's making me wonder why the Results only give trades starting in June 2020. I put the dates of the test from October 2019 - October 2020... but it only starts showing trades in the Results tab from June 2020 on. And it's several trades per day. I wonder why the first 8 months are missing? Any idea?
 
Download history for all TFs.
 
William Roeder:
Download history for all TFs.

I read the link you sent, and I still don't know how to download the full history.


Edit: After Googling for answers, do I go to Tools --> History Center? Then for some reason, i can't click OK. I'm on MT4


Edit#2: Ok, I figured it out. Thanks.

 
William Roeder:
If you see pass/profit factor etc., you are not doing a back test. You are doing an optimization of parameters.

Can you explain what optimization of parameters means?


Btw, I ran the same test with and without "optimization" checked, and it gave me the backtest results both times. I just didn't click on the correct tabs when I first posted this question.
 
farmerjohn:

Can you explain what optimization of parameters means?


Btw, I ran the same test with and without "optimization" checked, and it gave me the backtest results both times. I just didn't click on the correct tabs when I first posted this question.
 Nm, I just Googled it. I should probably try that first.
 
Does anyone know why it says "Order Send Error" when I'm trying to run backtests?
 
farmerjohn:
Does anyone know why it says "Order Send Error" when I'm trying to run backtests?

Because there was an error while sending the order !

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