Automated backtesting: rules or plain words

A manual session in Strategy Lab needs you to click through every candle. Automated backtests run a set of rules over about two years of our recorded candles without you. Spread and commission are charged on every trade.

Build a strategy

1. 1Open Strategy Lab and press Automated backtests.
2. 2Press New strategy (Write a strategy on an empty page).
3. 3Choose the Instruments and the Timeframe.
4. 4Fill When to buy, When to sell short and When to get out. Read each row as a sentence, for example EMA 9 crosses above EMA 21.
5. 5Add a Stop and a Target under When to get out.
6. 6Use When not to trade to filter by session, days, hours or news windows.
7. 7Set the size under Size and costs, then press Save.

Prefer words? Use Describe it in words, type when you buy and sell and when you get out, and press Write the rules. The analyst drafts the rules and puts them on the page for you to read. Nothing is saved or run until you confirm them.

Run it

1. 1Open the strategy and press Run.
2. 2Pick the From and To dates, inside the range of candles we hold.
3. 3Choose the Out-of-sample share: None, 20%, 30% or 40%. 30% is the default.
4. 4Press Start the run. It runs in the background. Come back and open it from Runs when its status says Done.

In-sample and out-of-sample

Every run can keep the last part of its date range apart as out-of-sample: results the rules never had a chance to be tuned on, shown next to the rest (the in-sample part). If a strategy does well in-sample and badly out-of-sample, it was probably fitted to the past.

Limits by plan

Free

5 runs a month, 1 word draft a day

Trader

30 runs a month, 2 word drafts a day

Pro

150 runs a month, 6 word drafts a day

Elite

300 runs a month, 10 word drafts a day

Desk

500 runs a month, 15 word drafts a day

The page shows how many runs you have left this month. A run that fails on our side does not use one. If a range is longer than your plan can test, pick a shorter range or a longer timeframe.