History Center on Tools Menu on the MT4

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

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

In the exemplification shown below, the Trading Time frames are Shown, However only 15M, H1 & H4 Icons are marked yellow & Green meaning data is being saved & updated to the History center. All others are Gray in color, meaning they have not yet been opened on this software. To change this and have these charts start to update & have the price information saved, just open any time-frame for the XAUUSD, e.g. the 30 minutes & the Icon for this time frame will immediately change from Gray to Yellow and Green, do same for all others.

From the above exemplification you as a trader 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 MetaTrader 4 History Center

Because of the format of storing the data is in figures format it means that the figures can be analyzed using mathe formulas - mathematical methods therefore can be used to analyze & interpret the price movements in the online gold market.

These Mathematical trading methods are implemented for trading using computer programs. Computer programs will be programmed using these mathematical methods & formulas. This will produce what in coding is known as algorithm, these algorithms are implemented in MT4 using programs known as Expert Advisors(EAs) - Automated Programs.

This Expert Advisors(EAs) answer the question why the need for the History center? The information stored is used by online traders to test their automated EAs to get an idea of how these EA Bots would have traded & then determine whether they're profitable or not. If these are profitable, traders implement these automated trading systems on the live 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 real market and make profitable trade positions.

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

If you want to start testing these Expert Advisors then for every xauusd instrument you trade you must open that xauusd instrument, & also opening all the timeframes of that xauusd instrument, that's the following:

1 Minute - M1
5 Minute - M5
15 Min - M15
30 Minute - M30
H1 - 1H
4 Hour - H4
Daily - D1
Weekly - W1
Monthly - MN

When it comes to testing your Expert Advisor, choose the start date as the date when you'll execute the above operation of downloading all the data for these chart time frames and for different MT4 symbols also, so as to ensure your EAs are using correct info and give you the right results.

Because of this explanation you should not download any info on your MetaTrader 4, just use the data that's available after you open the charts like as displayed above and start from that point onwards.

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History Center on Tools Menu on the MT4

Why Use the MetaTrader 4 History Center