When learning how to trade Forex or any financial market, one of the key things you need to gain is Market Experience. With Market Experience you are able to interpret what you see and then if applicable, formulate a Trade Plan, and then execute that plan to a profitable end. Gaining hands on Market Experience takes time, a lot of time! But what if you could speed up that process?
Well there is a way, thank goodness!
It’s called Back Testing
Back Testing may at first glance seem a bit if a chore but it will pay dividends over and over again.
To Back Test a stratetgy and gain market experience you need historical market data for whatever financial instruments you want to trade. In the Forex world it is possible to source and upload/import historical price data into the Metatrader 4 or 5 platforms. You can then go to the data start point and with you chosen timeframe selected you can use the ‘F12’ key to advance time one candle at a time. The downside to this type of back testing is that you can’t actually take trades as you see opportunities arise and you may be able to see future candles too so you are not really trading the Hard Right Edge..
A far better way to Back Test is to use a dedicated piece of Trading Software called Forex Tester, this simulates the trading platform as if you are trading a live market and you can speed up or slow down the advance of new candles and take actual trades with limit orders for take profit levels and stops. It also allows you to save a particular back testing project, so that you can break it up into chunks if you are time limited. You can also export the resultant trade data for further analysis if you want.
Purchasing Forex Tester will save you money, because once you have used it and mastered its’ potential you won’t want to trade in the live markets UNTIL you have tested your strategies out in Forex Tester, to prove their profitability over time.
So you will be able to prove a strategy works or not, gain trading and market experience and have a vehicle within which you can improve a strategy or even develop one of your own.
It is also great for improving your market analysis and conditioning your brain to see common patterns and price action, plus identifying key Support and Resistance and then making use of that in your trades.
What about News Events? I hear you say! Well the data has the market reaction to News Events in it so if you can trdae successfully in Forex Tester then you should be able to trade a Live Market although the emotions of trading Real Money may be different.
Top Trading Tip: If you are really serious about becoming a successful trader, then before you trade in the Live markets, you should seriously consider investing in your own copy of Forex Tester and learn how to maximise its’ functionality to prove strategies and gain Market Experience and thus speed up your ‘Learn To Trade’ process.
