Forex Tester - Forex Training Software For Traders, A Case Study

By Author: Gordon Hamm
Total Articles: 1
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Well, Its not every day that I'm impressed with a new product, but this one is one that should get your attention. Heres my experience with it, and a little about me, so you can see where I'm coming from. I had been writing software for 16 years, when I was introduced to Forex and Metatrader 3 or so years ago. If you have ever tried to use MT4 for training or back testing, you are aware of the inherent limitations. If you've ever written a script or robot for Forex, most likely, you've used Metatrader. Its easy and powerful, but again, is limited. A few limitations are...

1. When you look at a chart in MT4, you are looking at previously formed candles and indicators. You cant step through periods of time and watch candles and indicators form real time. You can only guess when you might have entered and exited a trade.

2.You cant backtest an EA that has any sort of multi currency or hedge strategy. I do a lot of work with hedged pairs, so this makes testing impossible. I cant tell you how many hours I've spent writing my backtests from scratch.

3. Importing and using Tick Data. Metatrader makes it very ...
... hard to do.

4. MT4 has a very limited language for writing EA's.

5. EA's area very hard to debug.

Forex Tester overcame these obstacles right out the box, it was easy to install and has NEVER locked up yet. Wow, dream software.

The first time you install it, you will soon notice that it looks very much like the Metatrader you are used to. This is by design for ease of use I suppose. It comes with many Indicators out of the box, There was only one that I use that I had to write from scratch, no biggie. The way I see it, It has 2 major benefits..

1. ForexTester is a Coaches dream. It's a best forex training software. You can teach a strategy, set up your charts etc.. Then, the student can step through any time frame, for any time period, and watch the candles and indicators form before your very eyes. When you see a setup, you can place a trade. Then start stepping again, and see if the trade would really move into profit. Removes the guess work.

2. If you are looking to test an automated strategy, you will love the control of ForexTester. No, you can can't test EA's in their native form, but ForexTesters API is very similar to MT4, not a big deal to convert, and worth every minute in my opinion. Not only are the tests more accurate, but you will see your trades transpire visually , right on the chart as you are testing. Again, you will watch as candles and indicators form REAL TIME during the test. When finished, No need to comb through the log, and try to match it on the chart. You can scroll back, and look at your indicators right on the chart, and see for yourself if the trades happened as they should have. Of course, you can still comb through the Trade history if you wish. BTW, indicators and strategies are written using either C or Delphi, and compiled as a true simple dll. ForexTester has very simple API functions, similar to MT4, that you can call in your DLL. Being from the Delphi world, I loved that. It took me about an hour to configure Forex Tester and write my first strategy. I Imported history data (Free from ForexTester.com) and ran it.. It back tested perfectly. Having full control over my code, I felt at home, no code limitations. It was much easier to place break points in my code, I'm told with the right configuration, you could even step through your code.. Cool!

Mike, has been very responsive to me, and has a very active forum.

If you are a manual trader and want to test your hunches, you will love just building strategies using ForexTester's visual world. If you are a moderate to advanced coder, you will love what you can do with Forex Tester in building automated tools.

You can download ForexTester for free, its cheap to buy at $150.00. Worth every penny!