Every tick vs real ticks vs 1 minute OHLC on gold

Only the real-ticks mode replays what your broker recorded, while Every tick and the OHLC mode invent the path inside each minute by a fixed rule, which can flatter logic that acts inside the bar.

• Every tick based on real ticks replays what your broker recorded. Every tick and 1 minute OHLC invent the path inside each minute bar from its open, high, low and close, by a fixed rule.
• On a generated minute the tester decides whether gold reached its low or its high first. A stop and a target inside the same minute are settled by that rule, not by the market.
• Run one preset in three modes over the same window. Where the results part, the EA depends on what happened inside the bar.

Most pages that rank for this question answer with a preference: use real ticks, OHLC is fine for swing systems. That skips the part that decides it for a given Expert Advisor: what each mode actually feeds the EA, and where gold makes the difference show. This guide takes the mechanism from MetaQuotes’ own documentation. For setting up a run and reading History Quality, start with how to backtest a gold EA in MT5.

The four modes in MetaQuotes’ words

The tester’s settings page lists them (MetaTrader 5 Help):

• Every tick based on real ticks: “Testing is performed using real ticks of financial instruments, accumulated by brokers. No simulation is performed.”
• Every tick: “the most accurate but the slowest mode. All ticks are simulated in this mode.”
• 1 minute OHLC: “only 4 prices (Open, High, Low and Close) of each minute bar are emulated.”
• Open prices only: OHLC prices are modelled, “however only the open price is used for testing/optimization.”

Every tick is the most accurate of the generated modes, and it is still a simulation.

How the tester invents a minute of gold

Every generated mode starts from one-minute bars. For Every tick, the tester builds a path of reference points inside each minute: “The number of such points cannot exceed the tick volume, and cannot be larger than 11”, divided between “the opening shadow, the candlestick’s range (between its High and Low) and the closing shadow” (MetaTrader 5 Help).

The order is fixed by the candle’s direction. In the documented point sequence a bull candle runs Open, Low, High, Close; a bear candle runs Open, High, Low, Close. A doji is treated as the opposite of the candle before it.

That is a reasonable guess about an average minute, and it matters on gold because a gold minute can be wide. On a fast minute, a buy with a stop below and a target above can see both levels inside the same bar. Real ticks would say which came first. A generated bar settles it by the rule: if the minute closed up, the low came first and the stop was hit; if it closed down, the high came first and the target was.

1 minute OHLC: four prices in a known order

1 minute OHLC drops the intermediate points and keeps four prices per minute. MQL5’s testing notes are blunt about what that allows. Between the open and the close, “the sequence of their occurrence is unknown”, yet dropping the intermediate ticks “leads to an appearance of rigid determinism in the development of prices” that “makes it possible to create a ‘Testing Grail’” (MQL5 documentation). The same page advises: “If the test results of the EA in the rough testing modes (‘1 minute OHLC’ and ‘Open Prices only’) seem too good, make sure to test it in the ‘Every tick’ mode.”

An EA need not be written to cheat to benefit. Any logic that acts inside a minute, such as a tight target or a trailing exit, can be flattered by four clean prices.

Open prices only is narrower again, and the timeframe guide covers what it does to the chart period. MQL5 calls it suited to strategies that act only at the bar’s open “and do not use pending orders, as well as StopLoss and TakeProfit orders.”

The spread each mode sees

Gold’s spread moves, and the modes do not treat it alike. “When testing on real ticks, a spread may change within a minute bar, whereas when generating ticks within a minute, a spread fixed in the appropriate bar is used”. In Every tick, “the bars are built by Bid prices” and “The Ask price is calculated as Bid + fixed spread of a corresponding minute bar” (MetaTrader 5 Help).

So a generated minute has one spread from start to finish. The minute in which a data release lands is the one where that flattening flatters most, and why a gold EA backtest differs from live trading works through what else the tester smooths.

Real ticks are checked, and replaced when they fail

The real-ticks mode is not raw replay either. The tester compares each minute’s ticks with its M1 bar: “a tick should not exceed the bar’s High/Low levels, also initial and final ticks should coincide with the bar’s Open/Close prices.” If they disagree, “all ticks corresponding to this minute bar are discarded. Generated ticks are used instead”, and a minute with no ticks at all is generated too (MQL5 documentation).

So a real-ticks run can still contain generated minutes, which is what History Quality measures. Our own published runs show it: every XauStack figure comes from the Strategy Tester in every tick based on real ticks on IC Markets demo data, ticks before 21 April 2026 were synthesised from M1 bars, and History Quality reads 63 %.

A three-run test for any gold EA

You do not need the source code to find out how much an EA depends on the inside of the bar. Keep the preset, symbol, deposit and window fixed, and change only the mode:

1. Every tick based on real ticks, over a window where your broker has real ticks.
2. Every tick, same window.
3. 1 minute OHLC, same window.

Then compare the deal lists, not just the net. The same trades at nearly the same prices mean the EA acts on completed bars and the mode barely matters. Trades that appear, vanish or close elsewhere mean the result depends on the path inside the minute, and only the real-ticks run is evidence. If 1 minute OHLC comes out clearly ahead, treat that as the warning MetaQuotes describes.

Check which mode a seller’s report used, too; the report states it. A run on 1 minute OHLC says little about an EA whose logic works inside the bar.

Each Product’s free Backtest Edition runs only inside the Strategy Tester, so you can run this test on any of our strategies with your own broker’s data.

Before you act on any of this

Every figure XauStack publishes comes from the MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester, never from live trading, and no result is promised anywhere on this site. A mode changes how faithful a replay is; it does not turn a backtest into a forecast. Read the risk disclosure before you attach anything to a funded account.