Historical price data recorded for every single tick (price change) in the market. A tick is the smallest increment of price movement (or each update/quote in the market). Using tick data in backtesting means the simulation processes every price movement, which allows testing strategies intrabar with high precision (e.g., seeing if a stop-loss would be hit intra-candle). This is in contrast to using only bar data (open/high/low/close per interval) which may miss details of price movement within each bar. High-quality tick data leads to more accurate backtests, especially for strategies sensitive to intrabar volatility or strategies like scalpers. However, tick data backtesting is slower and requires more data (and computing power) than using coarser data.

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