Backtesting a time based strategy

Hello,

what do i have to consider when i want to backtest a time based strategy which requires high accuracy to have my orders executed at a specific time?

I want to backtest a strategy that opens a buy/sell order every time price breaks the high/low range for the first hour after the London market session open (no matter if during winter/summer).

The historical tick data downloaded with the help of QuantDataManager says to be in the format of GMT+0 (No DST).

Monday through Friday, the first hour of the London Open would be 07:00-08:00 AM GMT+0.

So does that mean i can have my EA set to use 07:00-08:00 and it would automatically match the first hour of the London market for a backtest including a full year or longer, or would i have to run a different test for winter/summer times?

I am kind a confused 🙂

15/02/2022 – GBP/USD M15 “dukascopy-demo-1”

The M15 candle marked by the red vertical line is the first 15 minutes of the London Open (08:00-08:15 London Time). The broker’s server here is GMT+3 during summer time and GMT+2 during winter time.

15/02/2022 – GBP/USD M15 “Imported Tick Data”

Here’s a chart after running a visual backtest through the MT4 strategy tester for the same day, using 07:00-07:15 (GMT+0) as my input for the EA to mark the London Open. It is marked by the first red vertical line.

Now here the London Open is a complete different candle, obviously 1 hour too early. So I’m assuming I can’t do my backtest for a whole year using the same time setting?

Hi, the DST is changing automatically in the backtest but you need to find out the correct setting for your broker.

Hey. Thank you for your answer.

Well, the expert advisor i am using has no option to adjust automatically for DST if that is what you mean. It will always use the same time inputs.

Right now when running the backtest for a period going back longer than 1 year i don’t seem to get accurate results. Before March 27th (where EU changed clocks to summer time) it then no longer matches with the first 15 minutes of the london open using 07:00-07:15 as my EA input.

I am running the backtest against the data from Dukascopy exported with QuantDataManager. It says GMT+0 (NO DST).

kind regards,

Roman