When looking at your MT4 charts, sometimes you are only seeing partial historical MT4 data.
This won’t necessarily cause problems with lower time frames, but when it comes to longer timeframes, not having all of the available historical Forex charts data can mean that you are missing key support and resistance levels.
Having a complete MT4 historical data download is also important for backtesting.
How To Download Historical Data in MT4
To download additional MT4 history data:
Go To the Tools menu and select History Center. Optionally press F2 on your keyboard.
Double click on the asset you want to download.
When MetaTrader 4 downloads data, it downloads 1-minute data, then translates that into the other timeframes. Please Note** MT4 retrieves data from MetaQuotes, not your broker.
So if you want to get broker specific data or you want to get more historical data than what MetaQuotes provides, then you will have to import a custom file. Contact your broker to get this data.
To download the complete history for an asset, highlight the asset and click on the Download button.
It may take a few minutes to download the data, especially if you have never done it before.
There will be a green status bar at the bottom of the screen to show you the progress of the current download.
You can also click on the Import button to upload your own data.
The Export button will allow you to get a CSV file that you can use in another charting program.
The only downside to getting all of this data is that it can take up a large amount of space on your hard drive. So if you have a small SSD, are running a virtual machine, or you are running out of room on your drive, be selective about which assets you download data for.