Historical Market Data Guides
Practical, no-fluff guides on getting and using historical market data with a local downloader — from your first run to a trustworthy backtest.
The short version: historical price data for 265+ forex, crypto, stock, index, commodity and bond series is free to fetch — your own machine connects to Dukascopy Bank SA and writes CSV or JSON straight to disk, at any timeframe from raw ticks to monthly candles. What takes reading is the rest: which timeframe you actually need, how large the file will be before you start it, what the columns mean, and how to load it into MetaTrader, NinjaTrader, Excel, pandas or DuckDB without quietly corrupting it. That is what these 24 guides cover.
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Browse every forex, crypto, stock, index, commodity and bond series, each with its real history depth. - Download the app →
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Getting started
- How to Use MarketData Hub — The Complete Guide
The complete MarketData Hub manual: install, activate, configure a download, run the queue and find your files — every feature, with real screenshots.
Updated · 8 min read - How to Download Historical Market Data
Step by step: download historical OHLC and tick data for forex, crypto, stocks and indices. Pick instrument, timeframe and range — it writes CSV locally.
Updated · 2 min read
Gold & metals
- Download Gold (XAU/USD) Price History
Download spot gold (XAU/USD) price history to your own machine: tick to monthly OHLC as CSV or JSON, daily candles from 1999 and quote-level ticks from 2003.
Updated · 3 min read - Gold Tick Data (XAU/USD): What You Get, and How Big It Is
Quote-level XAU/USD tick data: bid/ask rows from 2003-05-05, why ticks start years after the daily series, and when candles are enough.
Updated · 3 min read - Backtesting a Gold Strategy on Historical Data
Backtest gold (XAU/USD) honestly: which timeframe fits which strategy, and the three gold-specific traps — session cut-offs, weekend gaps and the dollar leg.
Updated · 2 min read - Building the Gold–Silver Ratio from Historical Data
Build the gold–silver ratio from XAU/USD and XAG/USD history: aligned daily series from 1999-06-03, DuckDB and pandas recipes, and why the dollar leg cancels.
Updated · 2 min read
Data format
- Historical Market Data CSV & JSON Format Explained
What columns are in a market data CSV? OHLC and tick layouts explained, with examples and how to import into Excel, Python pandas, R and MetaTrader.
Updated · 1 min read - Tick Data vs OHLC Candles
Ticks are every quote; OHLC is a summary. A year of one pair is gigabytes as ticks and megabytes as 1-minute bars — here is when that trade is worth making.
Updated · 1 min read - How Big Is Tick Data? File Sizes by Timeframe
How big tick data really gets: tick vs 1-minute vs daily CSV sizes with worked EUR/USD and BTC/USD numbers, and a bytes-per-row rule to size a download first.
Updated · 3 min read
Using the data
- Backtesting a Trading Strategy with Historical Data
Backtest a strategy on free historical data: choosing a timeframe, avoiding look-ahead and survivorship bias, and which tool — Backtrader, VectorBT or MT.
Updated · 1 min read - Loading Historical Market Data in Python (pandas, Backtrader & VectorBT)
Load historical forex, crypto and stock CSV into Python: read_csv with a datetime index, resampling timeframes, and feeding Backtrader or VectorBT.
Updated · 1 min read - Querying Historical Market Data with SQL (DuckDB)
Query historical tick and OHLC data directly with SQL — DuckDB over Parquet or SQLite. Resample candles and compute returns in seconds, with no import step.
Updated · 2 min read - Automating Market Data Downloads
Script it, schedule it, keep it current: the headless CLI, the scheduler and watch mode that keep a growing dataset up to date without hand-running downloads.
Updated · 2 min read - How to Import Historical Data into MetaTrader 4 & 5
Import CSV historical data into MetaTrader 4 and 5 — the History Center, custom symbols, and getting the Strategy Tester to backtest an EA on your own data.
Updated · 1 min read - Importing Historical Data into NinjaTrader 8
Import tick, minute and daily data into NinjaTrader 8: the text format it expects, the UTC setting that trips everyone, and how to verify the series after.
Updated · 2 min read - Historical Market Data in Excel & Google Sheets
Get historical forex, stock and crypto prices into Excel or Google Sheets: import the CSV cleanly, fix the timestamps, and build charts that hold up.
Updated · 2 min read
Major markets
- Download EUR/USD Price History
The full EUR/USD series on your own machine: daily candles back to 1973, ticks from 2003, as CSV or JSON — and what the 1999 euro launch means for early data.
Updated · 2 min read - Download GBP/USD (Cable) Price History
Forty years of GBP/USD on your machine: daily candles from 1986 — Black Wednesday included — ticks from 2003, as CSV or JSON, fetched locally.
Updated · 1 min read - Download Nasdaq 100 (USA 100) Price History
The USATECHIDX series on your own machine: daily candles from 1990 — dot-com boom and bust included — intraday from 2011, ticks from 2013, as CSV or JSON.
Updated · 1 min read
Coverage & comparisons
- How Far Back Does Historical Market Data Go?
History depth for all 265 instruments, mapped from per-timeframe metadata: the deepest daily series, depth by asset class, and the tick-vs-daily gap.
Updated · 4 min read - Best Free Sources of Historical Market Data (2026)
An honest comparison of free historical market data sources in 2026: Dukascopy, HistData, TrueFX, Stooq and Yahoo Finance — coverage, timeframes, tick depth.
Updated · 2 min read - MarketData Hub vs HistData (2026)
HistData's free forex ZIPs against the MarketData Hub desktop client: coverage, granularity, packaging, price and privacy — including what HistData does better.
Updated · 2 min read - MarketData Hub vs Dukascopy's Own Historical Export
Dukascopy's free browser export and the MarketData Hub client pull from the same archive — so the comparison is pure workflow: per-request exports vs a queue.
Updated · 2 min read - MarketData Hub vs TrueFX (2026)
TrueFX's free registered tick downloads against the MarketData Hub client: pair coverage, candle support and workflow — including where TrueFX simply wins.
Updated · 2 min read