Before start testing you need to prepare data for it. In History Mode you can see complete history for all imported symbols and for all time period. It is too much to test them all in many cases, usually you need 1 or 2 currencies to test and not from the very beginning but, for example, only for 1 year. It can improve speed of testing and hide unused symbols. Also you can use different styles of price movement simulation. History Mode stores data as 1 minute bars, and most of data sources also provide data in this format. So, to prepare data for testing, we need to convert these 1 minute bars into ticks - series of small price changes inside 1 minute bars.

You can generate ticks only in History Mode , to open dialog window go to File -> Generate Ticks menu:

or press the button on the tool bar:

In this dialog window select period of time, check symbols you want to test (you can test one, or more symbols at the same time) and method of price interpolation. There is 3 method available: Generate randomly by real volume - means that number of ticks inside each 1 minute bar will be equal to volume information for this bar and they will be distributed randomly inside this bar; Generate point by point - means that number of ticks inside each bar will be defined by bar size and ticks will go with 1 point increment from open to close including high and low; Generate by Open/High/Low/Close - means that each bar will contain 4 or less ticks equal to Open/High/Low/Close of this bar (less then 4 could be in situation when Open = High, or Low = Close). We recommend to use the last method of ticks generation, it is fastest and provides good quality for testing.

Results of generating ticks by different methods:

1. Ticks generated randomly by real volume, there are lots of ticks and they are spread randomly. It will be slow for testing but if your strategy uses volume information it could be important.

2. Ticks generated point by point. It could be also lots of ticks if you have big 1 minute bars, the advantage is that price will go through the every point inside the bar without jumping.

3. Ticks generated by Open/High/Low/Close. Less ticks and they are all important. Fast and good enough for most of cases. We recommend to use this method.

Note: all methods of ticks generation will make absolutely the same bars during testing, they affects only price movement inside the 1 minute bars.