Topic: Some basic questions
Apologies if this informateion is posted elsewhere but I haven't been able to find it.
I've just started playing with FSB, and have some queries.
1. I can't create a data file in the correct format it seems. I assume from the instructions that the date format is controlled by the separater (hyphen for yy/mm/dd, period for dd/mm/yy and slash for mm/dd/yy) but no amount of fiddling in Excel or Notepad has given me a valid file. Particularly confusing for me as here in Oz the default is the British format, dd/mm/yy, which is apparently not supported.
2. The doc also says that space, tab and comma are acceptable data separators, but tab seems to be the only thing that works. Manipulating tabs in Notepad is basically impossible.
3. I tried saving data from MetaTrader, but I am using MT5 and the format seems to have changed slightly. The file name now uses M1, M5, D1 etc instead of the number of minutes. The format also seems to be not compatible with FSB as noted above. When I try to load it I get a "could not count the data bars" error. Perhaps this is due to incorrect date format? Also, MT5 does not insert tabs into the file created, only a comma, and the date and time only have a space separator.
4. It appears that indicators are coded in a proprietary FSB format, and there appears to be no way to import indicators developed for MT4 or MT5 into FSB, or back the other way if it comes to that. Is this correct? If so then FSB's usefulness is severely limited. I have two indicators written for MT5 that I designed and as far as I know are not being used by anybody else. How can I backtest in FSB using my indicators? Do I have to have my indicators recoded into FSB format? Also there are many indicators written for both MT4 and MT5 that do not appear in FSB. Presumably none of thes indicators can be (easily) used in FSB either?
5. I have seen in other posts that apparently FSB cannot access bar information other than the current' bar it is processing. Is this correct? My indicators rely on a series of events occurring over a set of up to 30 bars. If FSB cannot access prior bar information then it seems my indicators could not be transferred to FSB even if I wanted them to be.
6. In several places I have noted the comment that trades can be transferred to MT4. I assume this means that FSB and MT4 can communicate with each other, and that FSB can trigger MT4 to enter trades (presumably via an EA, but I haven't really delverd into that yet). Is this correct? Are there any plans afoot to support MT5 as well?
Thanks for your patience and time. I appreciate I have asked a lot of questions here, and maybe some of the answers are contained in the documentation or forum posts, but I have not been able to find any direct answers to these issues. I really appreciate all assistance and responses.
Thanks in advance,
Ian