History Center on Tools Menu on MT4
The history center in MT4 is located on the tools menu. The history center will start to store data for every chart that you open on the MT4, This means that if you open the Oil Trading M15 chart, then from that point on the MetaTrader 4 history center will store information for this Oil Trading time frame and every time you login again to the platform to trade this information will be updated with the most recent oil 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 Oil Trading only information for M15 will be stored, and not for Oil Trading 1H or Oil Trading 4 H chart. Therefore, if you want to begin saving records for 1 Hour & H4, then you must start by opening these time frames & the data will begin to get saved from this point.
In the crude oil trading example explained below, the Oil Trading Time frames are Shown, However only M15, H1 and H4 Icons are marked yellow and Green meaning data is being saved and updated to the History center. All the others are Gray in color, meaning they have not yet been opened on this oil trading platform. To change this and have these charts start to update and have the crude oil price information saved, just open any time frame for the Oil Trading, 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 crude oil price data information 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 oil prices by analyzing this crude oil price movements.
These Mathematical techniques are implemented for trading using computer programs. Computer programs will be programmed using these mathematical methods & formulas. This will produce what in programming is known as algorithm, these algorithms are implemented on MT4 using programs known as Expert Advisors - Automated Oil Trading Programs.
This Expert Advisors answer the question why the need for the History center? The information stored is used by crude oil traders to test their automated Crude Oil Expert-Advisors to get an idea of how these EA Oil Trading Bots would have traded and then determine whether they are profitable or not. If these are profitable, traders implement these automated systems on the real market, if not then the trader changes their mathematical formula & 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 oil market & 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 below: However, this downloaded figures tends to have gaps & give inaccurate information, therefore as a trader it's best to use data that has been downloaded by the platform itself after installing it. That means the information that is available from when you downloaded the platform & started to trade with it, even if it is a few weeks or a few months.
If you want to start testing these Expert Advisors then for every oil trade that you trade you must open that oil chart, as well as opening all the time frames of that crude oil chart, that is the following:
- 1 Min - M1
- 5 Min - M5
- 15 Min - M15
- 30 Min - M30
- 1 H - H1
- 4 Hours - H4
- Daily - D1
- Weekly - W1
- Monthly - MN
When it comes to testing your Expert Advisor, choose the begin date as the date when you'll execute the above operation of downloading all the data for these oil chart timeframes and for different MetaTrader 4 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's available after you open the charts as displayed above & start from that point onwards.
