Bid/Ask spread in FOREX

[kgillis23]

Let me try this again....

I'm new to NT and this forum so I hope this his the right place to ask this question.

In developing and backtesting strategies using Ninjascript I find that my 'EnterLong()' and 'EnterShort()' calls are placing orders at the CurrentAsk and CurrentBid price - which happens to be the same. Does NT take into account the currancy pair pip spread? and if so, how do I set it?

Or do I have to program the spread in my strategy? And if so, how do I do that - for both long and shorts?

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

There is no concept of bid or ask price in a backtest. In a backtest, we only have a bar OHLCV information. During a backtest, bid and ask price are subsituted with the bar's closing price.

If you want to take into account a spread, I would set my slippage amount when running a backtest to a value of 3 if the currency being tested has a spread of 3.

[kgillis23]

So that was easy enough to do... once I knew what I was doing

However, the Slippage only goes as high/low as the bar high/low - meaning that I lose a pip spread here and there.

It dawned on me that I could just determine my trading "cost" by not setting slippage to 0 and then just multipling the pip spread by the number of trades in a backtest.

See any problems with that?

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

No, I do not see any problem with that.