History Center on Tools Menu on the MT4

The history center in MetaTrader 4 is located on tools menu. The history center will start to store info for each chart which you open on the MetaTrader 4, This means that if you open the Gold M15 chart, then from that point on the MT4 history center will store information for this Gold timeframe & every time you login again to the software to trade this info will be updated with the most recent prices and will then stored.

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

In the illustration shown & described below, the Time frames are Shown, However only M151, H1 and H4 Icons are marked & tagged yellow and Green meaning data is being saved & updated to the History center. All others are Gray in colour, meaning they haven't yet been opened on this platform. To change this and have these charts start to update & have the price info saved, just open any timeframe for the Gold, for example the 30 minutes and the Icon for this time-frame will immediately change from Gray to Yellow & Green, do the same for all others.

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

Why Use the Platform MT4 Price History Center

Because of the format of storing data in figures it means that these numbers can then be analyzed and interpreted using mathematical formulas methods to analyze these prices and get a general idea of the price trend movements.

The Mathematical methods are implemented for trading using computer programs. Computer trading programs will be coded using these mathematical methods and formulas. This will produce what in coding is referred to as algorithm, these algorithms are implemented on MT4 using programs referred to & known as EAs - Automated Gold Trading Programs.

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

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

If you want to start testing these Expert Advisors then for every trade which you trade you must open that chart, as well as opening all the time-frames of that chart, that's the following:

1 Min - M1
5 Minutes - M5
15 Minutes - M15
30 Min - M30
1 Hour - 1H
4 Hours - H4
Daily - D1
Weekly - W1
Monthly - MN

In testing your EA, select the start date as the date when you'll 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(EAs) are using correct data and give you the right results.

Because of this reason you shouldn't download any data on your MT4, just use the data that's available after you open the trading charts just as shown above and start from that point onwards.

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History Center on Tools Menu on the MT4

Why Use the Platform MT4 Price History Center