This is where enters the conversation. Dukascopy Bank (Switzerland) has established itself not just as a reputable ECN broker, but as the industry gold standard for granular, free, reliable tick-by-tick and minute-by-minute historical forex data.
For the retail trader who cannot afford Bloomberg or Reuters data feeds ($2,000+/month), Dukascopy is the undisputed king of free historical data. Use Cases: How Professionals Use This Data Downloading the data is one thing; profiting from it is another. Here is what professionals do with Dukascopy historical data : 1. Strategy Backtesting (The Obvious) Running a Python script (using vectorbt or backtrader ) to simulate a moving average crossover on 10 years of M1 (Minute) data. 2. Market Profile (Volume Profile) Tick data allows you to build a "Volume Profile" (Trading View’s Fixed Range Volume Profile). Knowing where the highest volume nodes (HVN) are historically helps you set limit orders. 3. Slippage Modeling By reviewing the tick data during previous Non-Farm Payroll releases, you can calculate the average slippage (e.g., "A market order of 1 lot slips 2.5 pips in the first second"). 4. Correlation Analysis Using daily data from Dukascopy, you can run regression analysis to see if Gold is truly negatively correlated to USD/JPY, or if that relationship has broken down in the last 3 months. Troubleshooting: Why is the data "bumpy"? Some users complain that Dukascopy historical data looks "noisy" or "choppy" compared to MetaTrader demo data. This is actually a feature, not a bug. dukascopy historical data
If you are backtesting a strategy, either exclude January 2015 or treat it as a "force majeure" test. If your strategy survives that day, it can survive anything. This is where enters the conversation