Controlling Simulation
Setting Speed
You can start the simulation with [>] button. You can pause and resume it at any time using the same button.
Speed slider can be used to make it run faster or slower. There are two available speed modes:
- Ticks/sec
Ticks are uniformly distributed in time, for example 2 ticks per second or 10 ticks per second. - Real-time
Ticks are distributed in the same way as they were distributed in real life. Of course, you can also speed it up with speed slider. For example, you can have it run 2 times faster or 5 times faster than in reality.
The difference between these modes can easily be seen in periods when there is little or no price movement, for example at night or on weekends.
Ticks/sec mode will simply skip the whole weekend and move to Monday.
In Real-time mode you will see Saturday and Sunday slowly passing by with no price movement (of course, you can still move to Monday immediately if you want using Next Bar button).
Moving Forward and Backward
It is possible to move forward and backward candle-by-candle on every chart and timeframe using Next Bar and Prev. Bar buttons in the main window. These buttons will use the chart selected from the drop-down list in the bottom part of the window so make sure to choose your preferred chart from that list.
You can also use [|<] and [>|] buttons in the control box on the chart to move forward and backward on this particular chart.
There are 2 modes of moving backward and forward:
- Bar Start - Moves to the first tick (open price) of next/previous bar.
- Bar End - Moves to the last tick (close price) of next/previous bar.
Automatic Pause
Sometimes you may want the simulation to run until price hits your Stop Loss, Take Profit or pending order. You can do it using the small [...] button in the main window. A new window will appear and you will be able to set one or more conditions which should pause the simulation automatically. Then, you just need to press [>] and wait until price reaches your targets.
Hotkeys
Basic operations can be done very quickly using hotkeys:
- Ctrl + Space - Pause/Play
- Ctrl + Up Arrow - Increase speed
- Ctrl + Down Arrow - Decrease speed
- Ctrl + Right Arrow - Next bar
- Ctrl + Left Arrow - Previous bar
- Ctrl + B - Buy
- Ctrl + S - Sell
- Ctrl + C - Close last trade
- Ctrl + A - Close all trades
Hotkeys work only in simulator's windows, so any of them must be currently active.
In other words, if you click anywhere on the chart, hotkeys will stop working. If you click anywhere in the simulator, hotkeys will start working.
Sessions Window
Sessions window can be opened and closed with Sessions button in the main window.
It shows you opening and closing hours of each trading session. It also highlights current session.
Saving and Loading Simulations
The simulation can be saved to a file and loaded at a later time. You can save as many simulations as you want by choosing different filenames. You can load them on other MT4 accounts or other computers, too.
You can save your work by going to Save tab in the main window and choosing Save Simulation. You will be asked to choose folder and filename. The software will save your simulation to a .sim file on your computer.
You can load your work from file by choosing Load Simulation in the first window shown after starting the program. You will be asked to choose a .sim file to load.
