MT5 history explained: price history vs your account history
Charts and backtests use one kind of history; your results and your journal use another. Here is how to tell them apart and which one to fix.
Two different things in MetaTrader 5 are both called 'history', and mixing them up is behind a surprising number of support questions. One is the history of prices: the bars and ticks the terminal stores for each symbol so charts and the Strategy Tester have something to draw. The other is the history of your account: the orders, deals and positions that make up your trading record. They live in different places, are downloaded from different sources, and have almost nothing to do with each other. This page separates them, so you know which one you need when something looks wrong and which one a trading journal reads.
Price history: bars and ticks
Price history belongs to a symbol, not to you. It is the series of candles (bars) and, for some symbols, individual price changes (ticks) that your broker's server sends to the terminal. Charts are drawn from it. The Strategy Tester replays it. It is the data you would export to a spreadsheet to study a market, or to feed a backtest.
In the MT5 desktop terminal this data is managed from the Symbols dialog (View, then Symbols, or Ctrl+U), which has tabs for bars and ticks where you can request, export or import data. Menu names differ a little between builds and brokers, so check your own terminal. Our guide to exporting price data from MT5 walks through that side.
Problems with price history look like this: gaps in a chart, a backtest that says it has a low share of real ticks, a message about history synchronization or a cache that needs rebuilding, or a chart that is missing months of candles. They are about the market data on your computer and your broker's server, and they do not change a single number in your account's trade record.
Account history: orders, deals and positions
Account history is yours. It is what happened on your trading account: the orders you sent, the deals that resulted, the positions those deals opened and closed, and the balance operations (deposits, withdrawals, credits) around them. You see it in the Toolbox, on the History tab, where a drop-down lets you choose which kind of rows to show and the period to cover.
| Price history (bars and ticks) | Account history (orders, deals, positions) | |
|---|---|---|
| Belongs to | A symbol | Your trading account |
| Where you find it | The Symbols dialog, the chart itself | Toolbox, History tab |
| Used by | Charts, indicators, the Strategy Tester | Your results, reports, a trading journal |
| Typical problem | Gaps, low tick quality, sync or cache errors | Rows missing because the period filter is too short |
| Fixed by | Requesting data again, rebuilding history, changing the data source | Changing the period, the view or the account |
| Affects your P&L | No | It is your P&L |
Which one is a trading journal built from?
A trading journal reads account history. It needs to know when each trade opened and closed, at what price, with what volume, and what it earned after commission and swap. None of that is in the price history. That is why a journal can show a perfectly accurate record on a computer whose chart data is full of gaps, and why repairing your chart data will not bring back a missing trade row.
AI Trading Journal reads the account history of the MT5 terminal already open on your PC. The first run reads the whole account history it can see, and a scheduled task then adds newly closed trades about every five minutes. It keeps one entry per closed position, with partial closes combined and dated by the last exit, on the broker's server clock. It does not read or store price history, and it does not place, change or close trades. For the clock side, read MT5 server time explained.
If your trades look missing, check the account side first
When someone says 'my history is missing', nine times out of ten they mean the History tab, and the cause is the period filter. The tab shows only the range you chose, and the default can be as short as the last day or last week. Right-click the History tab and pick a longer period, or choose all history, then check that you are looking at positions, deals or orders as you intended. The full checklist is in MT5 trade history not showing, and the three row types are explained in deal, order and position IDs.
- Wrong period. The most common reason by far.
- Wrong view. Positions, orders and deals show different row counts for the same trade.
- Wrong account. A demo account and a live account have separate histories, and so do two live accounts.
- New terminal. A fresh installation on another computer must log in to the account before the history can load from the server.
- Broker limits. Some servers keep only a limited depth of history available to the terminal. If very old trades are absent, ask your broker for a statement.
If your charts look wrong, check the price side
- Gaps in candles. Request the missing bars again for that symbol and timeframe, or scroll back on the chart so the terminal downloads them.
- Backtest quality is low. The tester uses the tick data it has, and symbols without full tick history give weaker results. This is a data question, not an account question.
- Synchronization or cache messages. These come from the terminal's local data store. Closing the terminal and reopening it often resolves them, and your broker's support can advise if it persists.
- Different brokers, different candles. Every broker supplies its own price feed and server clock, so the same symbol can show slightly different bars on two accounts.
None of these actions should be taken as a way to recover trades. Rebuilding price data does not touch the orders and deals on your account, and deleting local files is not a way to refresh a trading record. If you are unsure, export a report first. Our guide to exporting MT5 trade history shows how, and it is worth doing before any clean-up.
A worked example (hypothetical)
A trader opens MT5 on a new laptop and sees two problems. The EURUSD chart has a gap in the middle of last Tuesday, and the History tab shows only three trades even though they took twelve this month. They assume both are the same fault and spend an hour rebuilding data. In fact the chart gap is a price-history issue, fixed by scrolling back and letting the terminal re-download the bars. The three-trade list is an account-history issue: the tab was set to the last week. Choosing 'last 3 months' brings all twelve trades back. The two fixes are unrelated, and doing the second one first would have saved most of the hour.
Limits of this page
- Menu names and options differ between MT5 builds and brokers. Treat the names above as a guide and check your own terminal.
- We describe how our app reads account history. We have not tested every broker's server limits on history depth.
- This is general information about a trading platform, not trading advice.
Frequently asked questions
What is the History Center in MT5?
Where is my trade history in MT5?
Does rebuilding price history delete my trades?
Which history does a trading journal use?
Why does my backtest say low history quality?
Related guides
- A local trading journal for MT5
- P&L calendar for MT5
- Trade notes, ratings and screenshots
- Trading progress and goals
- Back up your journal and move it to a new PC
- An offline trading journal for Windows
- How to set monthly trading goals
- Import your whole MT5 history
- How to tag trades
- Trade screenshots for your journal
- All trading journal comparisons
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