Forex Education - Forex EA Testing Setup and Procedures

1. Setting up a platform for testing:

· To test numerous forex trading EA’s or forex currency pairs, we want to setup and name a different platform for each forex EA and currency pair. When naming the platform, it may be best to name each platform with the forex currency pair that you are testing and from this time forward use this platform to only test that forex currency pair. This may seem cumbersome but this initial work makes testing results later 1000 times easier. The rule here is 1 EA per currency pair, per time frame, per platform. This will then mean only one output to forex review with no cross forex currency results or cross time frame results to pull out before evaluating the forex trade results. Now with these actual forward traded results accumulated, we can go and back test the forex EA against these results and evaluate the back testing of MetaTrader4.
· Open the currency pair chart window for the time frame to test.
· Load the chart template file associated with the forex EA. This template shows the forex indicators that the EA uses. At the end of the testing or each week, we will save the template with a name associated with the forex EA. This will save the trades executed that are displayed for further review. This template file can be sent to anyone at this point to see how the EA traded.


2. Account setup:

· Open a new account for the forex EA on the currency pair platform to be tested. Remember, 1 EA per currency pair, per time frame, per account. So for ex., if you are testing “Ultimate” EA on the 15 min chart on 4 forex currency pairs, you will need 4 different platforms setup.
· When filling out the application to set up the account, in the name field enter the name of the EA that you are testing. Ex Name: “Ultimate EA” this will then be displayed at the top of the reports that can be printed.
· Open a standard account for $10,000.00 and trade 1 lot sizes.


3. Attach your forex EA:

· Attach your forex EA to the correct currency pair and time frame to be tested. Remember to attach the forex EA to only 1 time frame per currency per MT4 forex platform. Hopefully this will not be necessary to do in the future if we can get something like Order History working or another forex program that Mick Mick has told me about that will strip out the needed information automatically instead. For now though this is the only way I see to do these studies and to separate the forex results.

4. Weekly reporting:

· After the trading week has ended you will need to go to the terminal window and open account history.
· Right click in the account history field and choose custom period.
· Set the beginning and ending period to go from before the market opened for the week to after the forex market closed for the week. Ex. Saturday to Saturday.
· Go back to account history field and right click again and click “Save as Detailed Report”.
· Name the report with these rules to allow for easy naming. “forex EA name, forex chart time period, start date of week” Ex. Ultimate 1HR 6_3 This will quickly and simply give us the forex EA name, the forex chart period it was run on and the start date of the test.
· Email the test results that you have now saved. Include in the subject line the name of the forex EA, time period, and forex currency pair.

5. Weekly back forex testing:

· It is now at this point you will look to do the weekly back testing of the forex EA on the same forex currency pair for that time period.
· Name the report with these rules to allow for easy naming. “EA name, chart time period, start date of week, back test” Ex. Ultimate 1HR 6_3 Back test This will quickly and simply give us the forex EA name, the forex chart period it was run on and the start date of the test and that it is the back test results.
· The results of the back test will also need to be saved
· You should look to see how the results compared between the forward traded results and how the back test performed at the end of the week.
· Proper setup for back testing and the procedures involved will follow. This will include checking and confirming the data that will be used for the back test and loading the additional data if required.

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