Myfxbook Backtest provides more than 20 years of historical data across hundreds of symbols, with source data down to the one-minute timeframe.
One-minute data
The simulator uses one-minute historical data rather than tick-by-tick data.
Higher-timeframe candles are constructed from the available historical data, allowing charts with different timeframes to remain synchronized.
One-minute resolution is suitable for many intraday, swing-trading and longer-term strategies. However, it cannot reproduce every price movement occurring inside an individual minute.
This is particularly important for:
- Sub-minute strategies
- Very tight Stop Loss levels
- Very tight Take Profit levels
- High-frequency trading
- Strategies that depend on tick order
- Trades where both the Stop Loss and Take Profit fall within the same one-minute candle
Why prices may differ from a broker
Historical prices can vary between data providers and brokers.
Differences may be caused by:
- Different liquidity providers
- Broker-specific price feeds
- Time-zone differences
- Different daily candle closing times
- Spread differences
- Missing or corrected historical candles
- Symbol specifications
A small difference between a Backtest chart and a broker chart does not necessarily indicate an error.
Trading costs and execution
Live results may differ because real trading can include:
- Variable spreads
- Commission
- Swap or rollover
- Slippage
- Execution delay
- Requotes
- Partial fills
- Limited liquidity
- Broker-specific margin rules
A Backtest result reflects only the costs and execution conditions included in the simulator or configured for that test.
Important: Backtest results are hypothetical. No representation is made that a strategy will achieve the same profit, loss, drawdown or execution quality in live trading.
Improving the reliability of a backtest
For a more useful result:
- Define the strategy rules before starting.
- Do not change those rules during the test.
- Include both winning and losing setups.
- Test several market conditions.
- Test several historical periods.
- Use a meaningful number of trades.
- Include realistic trading costs.
- Review drawdown and risk, not only profit.
- Repeat the test on other relevant symbols.
- Create a new backtest whenever the strategy rules are changed.