Comments on: Tick data – 99% modeling quality with Metatrader 4

By: Marcel

Marcel — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:50:52 +0000

Thanks a lot, Birt, it’s working!

By: birt

birt — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:00:56 +0000

The $10 monthly fee is for support and upgrades, the last of which are likely going to be needed for every new MT4 build.

I will only be providing support personally for about one month after launch; I already arranged for a support professional to handle all technical queries and I plan to offer an unprecedented level of support, including remote assistance when necessary. Since this is definitely not going to be a very popular product, I can’t really expect to pay a support professional from the 20-30 copies it will probably sell, so I had to find a way that allows providing good ongoing support. The $10 monthly fee was the only thing I could think of other than dramatically increasing the price.

Canceling the monthly subscription will not completely disable the Tick Data Suite, but it will revoke your access to support and you will not receive any updates (in other words, it will only work up to the latest MT4 build available at the time of your cancelation).

Regarding the problems with regular backtesting, there is a limitation with the Birt’s patch script: if you start MT4, run a backtest, load the script, then run another backtest, MT4 will crash. In other words, the script must be loaded first thing after starting MT4.

By: Neo

Neo — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:43:13 +0000

Birt, would you mind explaining a bit more about the $10 monthly fee? I understand the initial cost of $97, but what does that get you?–the new set of software (scripts, etc)?–and are they functional?–or do they need to be activated each month to be able to be used? What if I buy the Suite, but don’t use it every month?–would the Suite become inactive after a month’s worth of fees run out?

I’m also curious about the difference between your free script and the Suite that says “Avoids problems with regular backtesting”…what problems does the free script have?

Thanks for your time.

Best Regards,
Neo

By: Kain

Kain — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 02:09:48 +0000

Thanks for the heads up Birt, I think I have to read your codes throughly and modify them.

Will inform you how things are going once I have tested them.

Thanks and regards.

By: birt

birt — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:24:45 +0000

Updated the whole tick data section and split it into several guides.

The new CSV2FXT script that addresses the bug in MT4 build 409 that resulted in skipped years is in the downloads section and its usage guide has been posted as well. All the older FXT scripts (Dukascopy2FXT, JForex2FXT, Oanda2FXT) are now obsolete. The new script is able to autodetect the fields of the tick data CSV and figure out the date format. In addition, it adds a progress indicator on the chart. There were really major changes to this one and while I’ve done some testing, I definitely didn’t jump through all hoops so there might still be bugs here and there. If you encounter any, please let me know.

The PHP scripts and the Birt’s patch script have suffered some minor cosmetic modifications – an upgrade is not mandatory.

The Tick Data Suite pages are not yet ready but will be posted soon.

Another really major change is that support is no longer provided for the Birt’s patch script. If you run into a problem with it, I advise checking out the two FAQ & Troubleshooting sections available in the CSV2FXT guide and in the enabling tick data backtesting guide.

By: birt

birt — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:52:33 +0000

Hopefully this weekend. I’m already done with it & the DLL, just doing some tests now, but before posting it I have to finish the whole (huge) change to the tick data section of my site.

By: Marcel

Marcel — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:27:16 +0000

Thanks Birt, I am looking forward to the new script. When do you expect to release the new script?

By: birt

birt — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:23:05 +0000

It should be available before the end of the next week and it will cost $97 plus a monthly fee of $10.

By: birt

birt — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:21:12 +0000

It’s a known issue with the patch script.

The Tick Data Suite that should be released next week will work with optimization.

By: birt

birt — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:20:29 +0000

No, not yet. I’m hoping it’ll be released next week.

By: birt

birt — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:19:01 +0000

For all people having “skipped year” issues, I can confirm Marcel’s findings. It is caused by a bug in MT4 build 409. Attempting the conversion process with build 402 works perfectly with the same input CSV file that has errors with 409. I assume builds 405+ have the error and earlier builds don’t.

For what it’s worth, I’m working on a DLL to properly read the CSV files and it’ll be included in the next script release (which brings MANY major changes).

By: birt

birt — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:16:49 +0000

The processing script only works with tick data. For candle data, you need to make the import process work on your own (aka write some code for it). I have a tentative script that does that but I gave up quickly on it due to the volume issues. I might decide to publish it as well at a later time but don’t count on that happening too soon because I am extremely busy these days.