What are the safest bar types to backtest against?

[lewisquake]

Are time based bars the most accurate bars to backtest. I have used Heiken Ashi/Renko/Line Break charts but results seem too good. Why do they even exist in the backtest option if they are not accurate? Is there a use case for them?

[NinjaTrader_ChrisL]

Hi Lewis, thanks for posting. We did not want to limit those who wish to backtest these types of bars, so they are not excluded. The Renko bars are the only ones that are generally not reliable for a backtest because they can re-calculate their open price based on price direction and this is something that cant be simulated even with 1 tick historical data, and it's like this in all platforms, not just NinjaTrader. To backtest Renko or Line Break bars we recommend using the Playback connection. For Heiken Ashi bars the issue is the underlying data series is not used for the trade results, so we recommend using the HA8 indicator to use Heiken Ashi values in the signal calculation, but still be able to submit trades to the underlying data series.

Kind regards,
-ChrisL

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