At a glance
The short version
Most backtesting happens on old data. You pick a date from last year, replay it, take your trades, and move on. That is useful, but it leaves a gap: the market you actually watched yesterday — the move you hesitated on, the news spike you were not sure how to trade — is usually not in your backtester yet.
CRTLAB now updates every market every day. Each morning, by about 07:00 UTC, the previous trading day's full session is added: indices, forex, gold, silver, oil, US stocks and crypto, on every timeframe from one minute to one month, with real volume and the day's economic news tagged on the chart. So you can backtest yesterday's market today, and there is always a fresh session to practise on.
Why recent data matters for backtesting
You remember it. When you replay a session you watched live, you can compare what you did with what you should have done. That comparison is where most of the learning is — and it only works while the day is still fresh in your head.
Markets change character. Volatility, the size of the Asia range, how cleanly levels hold — these drift over months. A setup that worked in a quiet summer can behave very differently in a fast autumn. Practising on the most recent sessions keeps your read of the market current.
News is easier to study. If CPI or NFP moved the market yesterday, you can replay the minutes around the release while you still remember the headline, the forecast and how it felt to watch.
Your sample keeps growing. Every day adds one more session to test your rules on. Over a month, that is twenty-odd new sessions you did not have before — without searching for them.
A simple daily routine
- Morning: open a new session on yesterday's date. In the session picker the newest day is marked, and the calendar shows which day arrives next.
- Replay the session you watched. Take the trades your rules say to take — including the ones you skipped live.
- Journal the difference. Where did your live decision differ from your replay decision? That gap is usually the most useful thing you will write down all week.
- Repeat on the same market for a week. Five consecutive sessions tell you far more about how a market is behaving right now than five random dates from last year.
How the daily update works
- Every morning, once a day. The previous trading day's session is added for every market. Futures, forex, metals, oil and stocks get each completed session; crypto, which trades all week, is added right up to the update.
- Checked before it goes live. Each new day is checked for missing minutes, flat candles and price spikes before anyone sees it, so a half-built or broken day never reaches your chart. If a market's new day does not pass, that market simply waits for the next update.
- Nothing to download, nothing to refresh. The new day just appears. If you are mid-replay on the last day when it lands, the replay carries straight on into the new session.
- Weekends and holidays follow the exchanges: there is no new futures or stock session on a Saturday, so Monday's session arrives on Tuesday morning; crypto keeps updating every day.
Frequently asked questions
When does yesterday's data appear?
By about 07:00 UTC each morning. The session picker shows a live countdown to the next update and which day it adds.
Which markets are updated?
All of them: indices (NAS100, S&P 500, Dow, DAX), forex, gold, silver, oil, US stocks and crypto, on every timeframe.
Is the data the same quality as the older history?
Yes. New days are built the same way as the existing history — including the quote data that keeps one-minute forex candles clean — and checked against the same market's recent sessions before going live.
Do I need to do anything to get the new data?
No. Open a session and the latest day is there. A session you already have open moves on to the new data by itself.
