Strategy Tester Accuracy, Price constants, Expert Advisor

 
Intermittently in the strategy tester (FXDD- MetaTrader Version: 4.00 Build 201, 10 Jan 2007), many closing arrows, apparently from an OrderClose() function call, do not appear superimposed on the "Open-High-Low-Close" Bar Chart. They are present, but shifted above the Bar Chart. I have seen a sell order arrow also not on the Bar Chart. Pictorially this represents that entry or exit was allowed outside of the trading range for that period.

Hmmm, I was going to write that "Entries and exits of the simple coders guru lesson 16 do not occur at the cross over points nor at the stop loss point even after applying multi-period techniques at http://www.metatrader.info/node/66 to improve accuracy.", but my last run did appear to enter and exit by the next period after cross over points. Would you please provide alternating colors for any strategy tester indicators (instead of all red)? It would make it easier to confirm cross over points. Has anyone noticed inaccuracies here?

If the start() function in an expert advisor "EA" is executed for every tick ("At incoming of new quotes, the start() function..." "MQL4: Program Run"), then shouldn't there also be a PRICE_TICK price constant "MQL4: Price constants" ? If the EA only includes say the PRICE_CLOSE price constant, then the start() function would be more efficient if it was only executed right at the price close tick. I was thinking that this PRICE_TICK constant could improve the strategy accuracy as well as for the technical indicators.

Do you provide public algorithms for the technical indicators, so we could code our own to be applied for each tick?
 
padawan,

the last "tick price" before every start() is given in the Bid and Ask.
If you have long processing and want to update it in the middle of your code (since if your EA is in the middle of a start() function, it will not "listen" to the ticks that are coming meanwhile) - just use RefreshRates()

what do you need the constant for?

and besides,
there is no such thing as a "close tick"... the close price is "sealed" whenever an "open tick" arrives. i.e. - "close prices" are known only in retrospect.

m
 
At the www.metatrader.info link above, there was a comment about a debate over the value of the MetaTrader Srategy Tester. I feared I was experiencing this inaccuracy. I was thinking it may be due to the built in indicators not processing every tick since it is not among the Price constants. If there was a PRICE_TICK Price constant, it would satisfy this concern.

Also, it seems like a waste of processing power to call the start function for every tick (or even an opportunity to miss the needed close price -- if I'm in the middle of processing an unnecessary tick) since only say the PRICE_CLOSE tick will be used in this example:
double shortEma = iMA(NULL,0,8,0,MODE_EMA,PRICE_CLOSE,0);

Yes, I was thinking I could write my own to use each tick with the Bid or Ask. If I would have to write my own indicator to use the Bid and Ask to process every tick, then I would need the algorithms.