FXCM Strategy Trader Historical Data Free Download

FXCM started public beta testing of their new Strategy Trader trading platform back in March.  They are positioning their new platform as a superior alternative to MetaTrader 4 and the forthcoming MetaTrader 5. They describe it as:

The Next Evolution in Automated Trading – A Free Institutional Grade Platform [including] historical data, advanced back-testing and integrated execution.

and highlight its advantages over MT4 as follows:

FXCM has developed an automated trading platform that is fully geared for No Dealing Desk execution. By removing the need for 3rd party bridges, Strategy Trader can provide faster and more efficient execution than alternative automated platforms like MetaTrader 4.

FXCM invited us to start beta testing Strategy Trader some time ago, and our own tests suggest it still has some way to go before it can be let loose with real money as a "Retail Grade" automated trading platform, let alone "Institutional Grade". Mind you that same verdict applies to MetaTrader 5 also, which has already been in public beta testing for over 9 months!

If you are developing automated trading strategies for MetaTrader, Strategy Trader or any other forex trading platform you need to do lots of backtesting, and to do that you need lots of historical data. Although historical data has long been available free of charge with MetaTrader, that data has always had its problems. Recently those problems have got worse, with large gaps appearing in the historical data available for download via MetaTrader 4.

However FXCM have just come to the rescue of beleaguered backtesters around the world! Yesterday they made available freely downloadable one minute historical data for a large range of currency pairs, going back to 2001 in most cases. Also available, albeit over a much smaller time period, is historical data for stock indices, oil, gold and silver. Unlike the MetaTrader data, ask prices are provided as well as bid. Best of all FXCM thoughtfully provide the data as comma delimited text files. If you're really keen, with a bit of work you could even import it into MetaTrader 4!

At this point in time I have no idea about the quality of FXCM's data, but with that proviso if you would like to take a look at this treasure trove of free information you can read all about it on FXCM's Strategy Trader forum.

[Update – October 26th 2013]

FXCM have pointed out that they no longer support Strategy Trader, so our original link to their page extolling the virtues of that platform has now been removed.