• Registered: 2008-03-10
  • Posts: 1

Topic: I am confused

I just download the program and ran it, there's tips that I can't understand and a whole bunch of numbers with a couple charts but, how am I supposed to know what any of this means? I don't know where to start to "get the ball rolling" it's all very overwhelming. Any help please? smile

  • Popov
  • Popov
  • Lead Developer
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  • From: Bulgaria
  • Registered: 2006-11-30
  • Posts: 8,024

Re: I am confused

Read the help at http://forexsb.com/help/

Popov's Website

  • Registered: 2007-09-06
  • Posts: 34

Re: I am confused

At http://www.metaquotes.net/forum/1226/ it says about Metatrader MT4:

1M intrabar ticks in strategy tester
----------------------------------------

Waitak 17.10.05 05:29

"There is a significant weakness in the way that the strategy tester generates intrabar ticks for 1M charts. The effect is that, for some strategies that set a tight stop loss, the tester consistently underestimates the strategy's performance.

Consider the situation where the price is rising quickly - say by 8-10 pips in each of two consecutive bars, and that open == low, and close == high. The quotes in this case would be generally rising in real life. That is, it's very unlikely that the quotes would go from the open to (near) the high, then to (near) the low, then to the close. But in the tester, this happens a lot.

The practical result is that if you have a stop set on a strategy that's less then the size of the bar, and you go long near the top of the bar, the tester almost always shows a loss within the bar. In real life, however, it's very unlikely that the trade would lose within the bar, because the price is not very likely to drop that far below the enter price.

The solution might be to:

- Start at the open
- If the close is greater than the open, generate a tight fractal fill to the low, then to the high, then to the close.
- If the close is greater than the open, generate a tight fractal fill to the high, then the low, then the close"

Would using fractals as suggested improve Strategy Builder?

  • Popov
  • Popov
  • Lead Developer
  • Offline
  • From: Bulgaria
  • Registered: 2006-11-30
  • Posts: 8,024

Re: I am confused

Forex Strategy Builder calls the bars with unknown price move and with more than one active orders - "Ambiguous bars". It interpolates the price route inside them using the interpolating methods. More ambiguous bars in the back testing period lead to more significant fluctuation of the back test result.

If you use the intrabar scanner, FSB takes into account all available data, but some times they are not enough for a correct back test (two orders in the 1min chart). In these cases FSB also uses the interpolating methods.

Using the method comparator you will see the best and the worst backtest result. The real live price move should be somewhere around the average balance line.

When I started writing FSB several years ago I was surprised why nobody speak about the back test incorrectness when there are more than one execution possibilities. So the "interpolation methods", "Use previous bar value" and the "method comparator" are my answer of this problem.

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