Want to try your hand at Forex trading without breaking the bank?  Forex Tester may be just what you' looking for!  This service is a surprisingly fun piece of software that acts as a simulator of the Forex markets.  Novice Forex traders are sometimes too quick to jump into the thrill of the action.  Using a simulator like Forex Tester is advisable before throwing your money away and essentially setting yourself up for failure.

While there are many options for live Forex demo accounts, practicing in real time means waiting hours, sometimes days, to test your trading ideas and strategies against the actual market.  Forex Tester has packaged their simulation into a matter of hours and minutes for a faster and much more convenient method of testing.

The Forex Tester training software allows users to test out their trading skills without risking real money.  Users are able to load history data (even MetaTrader history) to enable mock trades where they can develop and test their trading strategies against the historical data.  You will be able to view and understand the pattern recognition and trading signals.  You can fast forward or rewind to test and retest your understanding.  There is a built-in list of many indicators to choose from or you can create your own indicators using Forex Tester API.  We also found during our Forex Tester review that the system logs your history and you can use screen snapshots to further analyze your strategies.

You can begin by visiting the download section of Forex Tester, where you are prompted to choose between the lite version and pro version of the software.  The lite version is primarily for manual testing and cannot test automated strategies.  A licensed registered copy is $99.  The pro version includes a number of templates and gives users the ability to save and reload previous testing strategies.  The pro version of the program comes with a $135 price tag but is the best bet for individuals who are serious about their trading.

You can test demos of both the lite and pro versions but the demo has two limitations.  First, you can only test for ten minutes before starting again from scratch and there is no option to save the results of your previous test.  Secondly, only the “Start testing from first date in range” option is active at Connect before beginning the testing process and you can only test one month of data history on the unregistered version.  Purchasing a registered copy will allow you to test your strategies uninterrupted and get the most from the simulator.

Let’s put it this way, if you master your techniques through the Forex Tester simulator, once you take them into the real FOREX market, you can very easily earn back your investment for the registered copy of the software.

Using the program is relatively easy.  You will see that there are two modes for the program – Edit Mode and Testing Mode.  In edit mode you are able to edit your currency list, either by adding new pairs or editing the four existing pairs, import your historical quotes and generate ticks.

It is necessary to get historical data and generate ticks before testing.   There are several sources online where you can freely download historical data.  Once source is Data Bank, the history center for MetaTrader 4 from Forex broker Alpari.  You can find other sources through your search engine of choice.  Once your data history is imported, you again go to the File menu, click Generate Ticks For Testing Mode where you choose your desired ticks generation method and the currency names and date range to generate ticks.

You are then able to begin testing strategies by switching to testing mode and hitting Connect.  The program will start reading and processing the prepared tick data and building bars.  You are then capable of simulated buying or selling or placing pending orders with the ability to pause testing, trace by bars or roll data back.

Tracking your actions is simplified by the ability to paint different styled graphics elements to the charts and fasten the control points to bars on the graph.  Throughout the course of a recent Forex Tester review, we also found that the company updated its charting capabilities, so that Fibonacci retracement lines are visible even if the tool is out of screen, and now users can define on which time frames their charting tools will be available.  The Forex Tester team also fixed several bugs in their latest update, once again indicating their sincere desire to provide the best possible service to their traders. 

One of the biggest advantages of the service that we found during our Forex Tester review is that the creator of the program is very active on the website’s message board forum, in addition to other Forex message board communities.  He is available to help traders with any questions and is genuinely interested in your feedback and suggestions to improve the program.  For instance, trailing stop functionality was recently added to the program, specifically due to requests from users on message boards.

We were thoroughly impressed with the Forex Tester service and would highly recommend it to any new trader who plans on taking their Forex trading seriously.