Thread: Backtesting & use of "bar magnifier" -- backtesting speed vs. accuracy

Hello,

I want to backtest on daily bars and use bar magnifier set to 1 minute resolution. I dont want to set the bar magnifier to 1 tick resolution as this would mean it would take far too long to run a backtest going back 10 years in time (plus I don't even know if my PC would have enough memory to run a backtest using an enormous 1-tick file going back 10 years in time, as my PC only has 4 GB of RAM).

So I wish to use the bar magnifier set to 1 minute resolution to speed up my backtests whilst still gaining high accuracy in backtest results.

My specific questions for FXCM are as follows:

(a) When the bar magnifier is set to 1 minute does the "strategy trader" (SR) backtesting engine (algorithm) only look at the Open, High, Low and Close (4 price points only) of the historical 1-minute bars?

(b) When the bar magnifier is set to 1 minute does the "strategy trader" backtesting engine "look-inside" the 1 minute bars (And not just look at the O,H,L,C of the 1 min bars) and it would do this via SR "modelling" the price behavior inside the 1 minute bars, like MetaTrader 4 does, via making certain specific assumptions regarding price behaviour occuring inside each 1-minue bars?

Thank you in advance for your reply. Much appreciated.

Kind regards,

Rod