How to change broker spreads in MT5 export

General discussion about the Tickstory Lite software package.
Post Reply
shawnsuen
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2022 11:40 am

How to change broker spreads in MT5 export

Post by shawnsuen »

Hi,

I just purchashed your standard version, but realized the tick data actually has a big problem working in MT5 in terms of spreads. The spreads are very different from my broker, and cannot be changed.

Tick data from tickstory has original imbeded spreads inside. When creating a symbol in MT5, no matter how I change the settings (set "float" or any other spread values in MT5), the original spreads preserve. These spreads are much much higher than my broker's spreads (I am using a ECN broker). It makes me impossible for me to do any backtesting!

I have two questions:
1. Do you have any ways to modify these spreads so that I can do backtesting in MT5?
2. How did you get these spreads for your data? From which broker?

Look forward to hearing from you soon!

tickstory
Posts: 4883
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2013 12:27 am

Re: How to change broker spreads in MT5 export

Post by tickstory »

Hi Shawnsuen,

FX exchanges are not centralized which means you will of course get differences in spreads between brokers. This represents the different set of liquidity and traders that are in the market with that particular broker. In Tickstory's case, this information is coming from Dukascopy which are reputed for having multiple pools of liquidity (i.e. ECN).

To answer your questions:

1) You can modify the 'spread' field that is exported in the MT5 bar export by customizing the Bar and Tick output formats.
For bars, you can specify something like so:

{BarBeginTime:yyyyMMdd},{BarBeginTime:HH\:mm\:ss},{Open},{High},{Low},{Close},{BarTickCount},{BarTickCount},{BarMaxSpread*100000+1:F0}

Note the formula portion highlighted in blue. It will essentially give you the BarMaxSpread (in fractional form), multiply by 100000 to get a integer number, followed by adding a 1 which is an arbitrary value which you would like to add (or subtract) from your spread. (The final ":F0" text is to remove the decimal places from the resulting data which MT5 might not like).

For the the MT5 tick data export, you can do a similar customization like so which will add 1 pip to the Bid price:

{Timestamp:yyyyMMdd},{Timestamp:HH\:mm\:ss},{BidPrice+0.00001},{AskPrice},{BidPrice+0.00001},{BidVolume:F0}

Please refer to our manual for further information about these features.

2) The data is sourced from Dukascopy.

Finally, just as an aside - as you may know, spreads can constantly change even on the same broker. If, for example, a broker gets more clients on-board, they may have much tighter spreads from one year (or hour!) to another. Therefore, it is always best to make sure your strategy is not highly dependent on a particular spread as this will likely indicate that your strategy will not perform as expected in a live environment. This item in our FAQ goes into a bit more detail about how you can approach your back-testing to ensure your EA is not being over-optimized.

Hope this helps.

shawnsuen
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2022 11:40 am

Re: How to change broker spreads in MT5 export

Post by shawnsuen »

Thank you very much, this is very helpful and resolve the problem.

I have another 2 questions:
1. Is there a way to save the settings when download the bar/tick data for MT5? For now, everytime, I have to select the timezone, re-select the fold for csv file, select the time period and everything. This is really annoying and unnessarily cost a significant amount of time to repeat this (I cannot download a lot of names together as I have to set the spread)..

2. I purchased your stardard version, is it the case that I can use your software with good download speed for lifetime? e.g. this purchase is not a yearly subscription, correct?

Thank you again!
Shawn

tickstory
Posts: 4883
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2013 12:27 am

Re: How to change broker spreads in MT5 export

Post by tickstory »

Hi Shawn,

Good to hear the original query has been resolved. In response to your questions:

1) Unfortunately the MT5 dialog box does not store the last configuration at this stage. We do have a solution for this in our next major version, however until then the best bet would be to use the File Export dialog which does save the last set file location and custom formatting.

2) Your Standard license provides you with access to our own data servers only while you have an active subscription. One month of subscription is included with the Standard package and, if you included a subscription at the time of purchase, it will automatically renew on a monthly basis. If your subscription lapses, the connection will fall-back to Dukascopy servers which are not as fast. If your subscription has expired, you can renew it by going to Help->About and clicking on the "Renew" button and following the prompts. Your subscription has many benefits including access to technical support, on-going updates and our MT4 Advanced Tester.

Hope this helps.

Archer
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Nov 08, 2022 9:33 pm

Re: How to change broker spreads in MT5 export

Post by Archer »

Hello,

I have another question regarding spread.
Is there any chance to set up a fixed spread in downloaded data ?

tickstory
Posts: 4883
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2013 12:27 am

Re: How to change broker spreads in MT5 export

Post by tickstory »

Hi Archer,

Yes, you can set a fixed spread simply by specifying the amount. For bars, it would look something like:

{BarBeginTime:yyyyMMdd},{BarBeginTime:HH\:mm\:ss},{Open},{High},{Low},{Close},{BarTickCount},{BarTickCount},1

where "1" is an arbitrary spread value.

For ticks you can specify a custom format like:

{Timestamp:yyyyMMdd},{Timestamp:HH\:mm\:ss},{BidPrice},{BidPrice+0.00001},{BidPrice+0.00001},{BidVolume:F0}

where "0.00001" is an arbitrary amount that you add onto the bid price which results in a fixed premium of the bid price.

Hope this helps.

Archer
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Nov 08, 2022 9:33 pm

Re: How to change broker spreads in MT5 export

Post by Archer »

tickstory wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 10:00 am
Hi Archer,

Yes, you can set a fixed spread simply by specifying the amount. For bars, it would look something like:

{BarBeginTime:yyyyMMdd},{BarBeginTime:HH\:mm\:ss},{Open},{High},{Low},{Close},{BarTickCount},{BarTickCount},1

where "1" is an arbitrary spread value.

For ticks you can specify a custom format like:

{Timestamp:yyyyMMdd},{Timestamp:HH\:mm\:ss},{BidPrice},{BidPrice+0.00001},{BidPrice+0.00001},{BidVolume:F0}

where "0.00001" is an arbitrary amount that you add onto the bid price which results in a fixed premium of the bid price.

Hope this helps.
it is working very well.
Thank you.
One more question - Is there any chance to set up your own range of spread :) ?
For example 0.1 to 0.5 spread with random rotation.

And also there seems to be a problem with daylight savings.
I have adjusted the time zone correctly.
However when I compare charts with my broker vs tickstory charts timing is incorrect.
After 06.11 everything is fine, but before 06.11 there is one hour gap, so time was not automatically adjust for daylight savings.
How to solve this issue ?
Last edited by Archer on Wed Nov 09, 2022 8:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

tickstory
Posts: 4883
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2013 12:27 am

Re: How to change broker spreads in MT5 export

Post by tickstory »

One more question - Is there any chance to set up your own range of spread :) ?
For example 0.1 to 0.5 spread with random rotation.
Please check out our manual here which discusses all the tokens available for export. There is support for a {Random:x,y} token which should do what you need.

Regarding your other question, since it relates to a different topic, please start a new thread (assuming a related one doesn't exist). Please note that if you are a subscriber, please provide your registered email address so we can prioritize your queries accordingly.

Thanks.

shawnsuen
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2022 11:40 am

Re: How to change broker spreads in MT5 export

Post by shawnsuen »

Thank you very much for your answers.

I have some follow-up questions:

1) As you mentioned "File Export dialog", how can I find this please? Could you please give me a bit more instruction how to do this?

2) In a case if my subscription already expired for a period of time say a couple of months, and then I decided to renew, will I still have the same monthly subscription price of $9.95 p/m? That's saying, is this $9.95 p/m be the same regardless of if my subscription is continous or not. And this $9.95 p/m is regardless of how many months I subscribe for? Like if I subscribe only one month, will I still have $9.95 p/m?

Thank you again,
Shawn



tickstory wrote:
Mon Nov 07, 2022 11:27 pm
Hi Shawn,

Good to hear the original query has been resolved. In response to your questions:

1) Unfortunately the MT5 dialog box does not store the last configuration at this stage. We do have a solution for this in our next major version, however until then the best bet would be to use the File Export dialog which does save the last set file location and custom formatting.

2) Your Standard license provides you with access to our own data servers only while you have an active subscription. One month of subscription is included with the Standard package and, if you included a subscription at the time of purchase, it will automatically renew on a monthly basis. If your subscription lapses, the connection will fall-back to Dukascopy servers which are not as fast. If your subscription has expired, you can renew it by going to Help->About and clicking on the "Renew" button and following the prompts. Your subscription has many benefits including access to technical support, on-going updates and our MT4 Advanced Tester.

Hope this helps.

tickstory
Posts: 4883
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2013 12:27 am

Re: How to change broker spreads in MT5 export

Post by tickstory »

Hi Shawnsuen,

In response to your questions:

1) The 'Export to File" option can be found by right-clicking on the desired symbol and selecting "Export to File...". This has a similar function as the "Export to MT5" function except you can customize all your settings and it will save some of your common settings.

2) The subscription price on sign-up is offered at a special discounted rate of $9.95 p/m. While your subscription remains active, this price is locked in. If you stop and start your subscription then the usual price will apply ($14.95 p/m).

If you have any further questions not related to MT5 spread, appreciate if you can post them in a new thread.

Thanks!

Post Reply