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Custom Symbols

When backtesting strategies in MT5, data quality is paramount. However, brokers may not always provide the instrument you need, or their historical data might be insufficient or unreliable. MT5 offers a powerful feature called Custom Symbols that helps us to solve this problem:

If your broker does not provide the instrument you want to test, or the provided history depth and the quality of price history is not enough, you can create a custom symbol and upload the required data to it.

— MT5 Documentation.

Automated Custom Symbols Management

Configuring custom symbols manually is tedious and error-prone. Quantdle Data Manager EA simplifies this process by automating the creation and data upload of custom symbols. Here’s how it works:

  1. Automatically creates a custom symbol using your broker’s symbols as a template. For example, it will create EURUSD.QDL using your broker’s EURUSD information. This means you’ll have the exact same configuration as the real symbol without having to manually configure each of the fields. Custom Symbol Creation

  2. Inserts the cleansed data downloaded from Quantdle’s servers into the target custom symbol with the correct format. Custom Symbol Data

  3. Keeps your symbols and data neatly organized with a clear suffix (.QDL or a user-defined suffix), so it’s easy to identify and select the correct symbol(s) for backtesting. Custom Symbol Backtesting

Benefits of Custom Symbols

Using custom symbols as separate data stores from your broker’s data offers several advantages:

  1. High-Quality Data: You’ll have a data bucket with data that has been cleansed and validated by Quantdle for every symbol. This ensures a higher accuracy in your backtests.

  2. Separation From Broker Data: Keeping the data in a separate custom symbol (EURUSD.QDL instead of just EURUSD) avoids potential conflicts or overwriting of the broker’s default symbol data.

  3. Ease of Organization: All your Quantdle symbols are automatically grouped together under a uniform suffix (.QDL). It’s simpler to manage, select, and differentiate them when setting up multiple backtests.

  4. Reliability: By ensuring consistent data formatting and avoiding MetaQuotes-provided datasets, you reduce the likelihood of data errors or mismatches during backtesting.