History Center on Tools Menu in MT4 Platform

The history center in MT4 is located on the tools menu. The history center will begin to store data for every chart that you open on the MT4, This means that if you open the Energies Trading M15 chart, then from that point on the MT4 history center will store information for this Energies Trading time frame and every time you login again to the platform to trade this information will be updated with the most recent energies prices & will then stored.

This also means that for any other chart not opened on your MT4 the platform will not start to save data for that chart. For example if you only open M15 for Energies Trading only information for M15 will be stored, and not for Energies Trading 1H or Energies Trading 4H chart. Therefore, if you want to start saving records for H1 and H4, then you must start by opening these time frames and the data will start to get saved from this point.

In the example highlighted & described below, the Energies Trading Time frames are Shown, However only M15, H1 & H4 Icons are marked yellow & Green meaning data is being saved & updated to the History center. All the others are Gray in color, meaning they haven't yet been opened on this platform. To change this & have these charts begin to update and have the price info saved, just open any time frame for the Energies, for example the 30 minutes and the Icon for this time frame will immediately change from Gray to Yellow and Green, do the same for all the others.

From the above example you can see the format that MT4 uses to store price data info as figures, these figures are the ones used to replicate the trading chart.

Why Use The MT4 History Center

Because of the format of storing data in figures it means that these figures can be analyzed using mathematical formulas and mathematical methods can then be used to trade the prices by analyzing this trading price movements.

These Mathematical methods are implemented for trading using computera lgorithm programs. Computer programs will be programmed using these mathematical techniques & formulas. This will produce what in coding is known as algorithm, these algorithms are implemented in MT4 using programs known as EAs - Automated Energies Programs.

This Expert Advisors answer the question why the need for the History center? The information stored is used by traders to test their automated Trading EAs to get an idea of how these EA Bots would have traded and then determine whether they are profitable or not. If these are profitable, traders implement these automated trading systems on the real market, if not then the trader changes their mathematical formula and reprograms the algorithm, then tests this new algorithm with the same data on the history center until the time the trader will program an algorithm that is profitable enough to trade the live trading market and make profitable trades.

One of the methods of obtaining data to the history center is to download this information using the download button key as shown & illustrated below: However, this downloaded figures tends to have gaps & give inaccurate info, therefore as a trader it is best to use data that has been downloaded by the platform itself after installing it. That means the info that's available from when you downloaded the software and started to trade with it, even if it is a few weeks or a few months.

If you want to start testing these EAs then for every energies instrument you trade you must open that energies instrument, as well as opening all the time frames of that energies instrument, that's the following:

1. 1 Minute - M1
2. 5 Min - M5
3. 15 Minute - M15
4. 30 Minutes - M30
5. 1 Hour - H1
6. 4 Hours - H4
7. Daily - D1
8. Weekly - W1
9. Monthly - MN

When it comes to testing your Expert Advisor, select the start date as the date when you will execute the above operation of downloading all the data for these chart timeframes and for different MT4 symbols also, so as to make sure your Expert Advisors are using correct data and give you the right results.

Because of this reason you should not download any information on your MT4, just use the data that is available after you open the charts as shown above and start from that point onwards.