Adding or removing a symbol from the MT4 symbol list #

MT4 symbols and data are separate from Tick Data Suite (TDS) Data and Symbols.

In MT4 you can show and hide symbols as long as your broker provides those symbols, it doesn't matter if you have data for them or not in TDS as that is a separate thing.

In MT4 you can go to View -> Symbols and it will show the symbols and classifications from your broker.

There you can select and hide or show any specific symbol.

After that restart MT4 and the list will also be changed for the MT4 strategy tester.

Now you can select the symbol you want for your backtest.

Note on Tick Data Suite symbol Names #

Sometimes names of symbols in Tick Data Suite repositories and your Broker may not be the same. In those cases it's important to use the Tick Data Suite selection feature to make sure you use the correct symbol.

In this Selection feature, you can select the data source from the ones available in your Tick Data Suite installation and then select the Symbol that is equivalent to the one your broker has. This is to be able to match the same symbols but with different names across brokers.

When selecting from the Symbol drop-down you can type the symbol name from your source in Tick Data suite and it will start a search in the list. The symbols that have data in your Tick Data Suite installation will appear in bold letters. Select the Symbol that corresponds to your MT4 backtest.

Once selected make sure that the data shows as expected, in this example we can see the data starts in 2018, while the symbol names are different the MT4 broker the symbols are equivalent in what they mean so now you can start a tick data backtest with that symbol.