Historical Data for Backtesting Trading Strategies

Backtesting is a critical step to optimizing a trading strategy. Backtesting assesses the feasibility of a trading strategy by using Historical Stock Market Data to see how a trading strategy would have performed in the past. This helps determine if a strategy is worth pursuing further. Typically, if backtesting doesn’t produce favorable results further testing and live trading won’t either. [1]

The frequency of the historical data used can affect the quality of your backtesting strategy. Without tick by tick historical data backtesting would be restricted to using daily data snapped at market close. This is undesirable as “market close” isn’t always at the New York Close, which can cause issues if you are trading various assets across different time zones. With tick by tick historical data you have the granularity needed to perform analysis and determine how a trading strategy would perform if it was executed at different times. [2]

Barchart’s Historical Market Data and Prices provides you with historical equity data and commodity prices delivered down to the precision you need. With tick-level information, bid ask data, depth of market, minute bar and end-of-day OHLC data delivered through APIs, Excel, Barchart Premier, cmdtyView or Flat Files, you have all of the data you need to perform an in depth analysis of your proposed trading strategy. Available as part of a recurring subscription or through a one-time purchase of bulk information – Barchart can customize a package to suit your needs and deliver research-ready data to you today.

In addition to backtesting a trading strategy, historical financial data is often used for custom analytics, interactive charting, building a financial app, quickly deploying back-offices, risk management groups, or accounting systems. Contact us at solutions@barchart.com to learn more about the solutions available to you.