Backtest replays a past chart over a date range you choose. The chart stops at the start of the range and keeps every later bar hidden; you move through it bar by bar and place practice orders as if those bars had not happened yet. It is a simulation on past prices with a practice balance: practice trades are never added to your journal, your analytics or your goals.
Creating a session
Press Create backtest session and give it a name. Optionally attach a Blueprint — one of your plans on the Blueprints page in the sidebar — so its checklist appears on every practice order. Pick Stocks & ETFs, Forex or Crypto, a symbol, a start balance, the leverage, a commission per side, and the date range with its times. Times are in your Trade Timezone.
Starting from the Chart page
The Backtest button in the chart’s top bar opens a new session with the symbol and bar size you are looking at already filled in. Check the date range and create it. Futures, options and symbols that cannot be priced in US dollars are not covered by backtesting, so for those the form opens empty.
Moving through the chart
- Play (or the space bar) moves forward on its own at the speed you set; the arrow buttons (or the ← and → keys) move one bar.
- The timeline above the chart jumps to any bar in the range, and Go to has presets such as the previous or next market open and the same time on the day before or after.
- Going forward plays every bar in between, so a waiting order fills and a stop or target triggers on the way.
- Going back undoes everything after the bar you go back to. When that removes practice trades or orders, you are asked first.
- You can switch the bar size at any time — 1, 5 and 15 minutes, 1 and 4 hours, or 1 day — to any size whose price history reaches back to the start of the range. A size that cannot is shown greyed out, and hovering it says why. The chart is the full chart, with its indicators and drawing tools.
- Switching the bar size never changes a trade that has already happened: its fill times, prices and P&L stay exactly as they were. Orders still waiting fill on the bars you are looking at.
- The backtest chart keeps its own settings: candle colours, indicators and drawings you set here do not change the Chart page, and the Chart page’s do not appear here.
- Drag the top edge of the Positions table to make it taller or shorter. The height is remembered on this device.
Changing a session after you create it
Press the Edit session button beside the session’s name (or in the Details panel). The name, description, start balance, leverage, commission and the end of the range can always be changed; a new commission re-prices every practice trade. Once a session has practice orders, its type, symbol, start and Blueprint stay as they are, because the orders were placed on that chart — start a new session to change them. Moving the end of a finished session re-opens it, so you can keep going.
How practice orders fill
- A market order fills at the next bar’s open — you decide on the bar you can see, and get the first price you could not.
- A limit or stop order waits and fills on the first bar that trades through its price, at that price — or at the open if the bar opens past it.
- A stop loss or profit target inside a bar fills at that price. If the bar opens past it, it fills at the open.
- If one bar reaches both your stop and your target, the stop is assumed, because a bar does not say which came first. The trade is marked so you can see it happened.
- One position at a time. The Positions table under the chart lists the open one and every closed trade.
- Advanced order sizes the position from a risk percentage of your current or starting balance and the distance to your stop loss.
- An order cannot use more than the balance times the leverage. No margin call is simulated.
- Commission is the amount per side you enter, charged on the way in and on the way out.
What you can backtest
Stocks and ETFs, forex pairs and crypto. The practice balance is in US dollars, so a currency pair needs USD on one side and a coin needs a dollar quote. Futures and options are not available. Every bar size reaches back to about 2020, and daily bars as far as the price history does. The picker shows how far each size reaches; a size whose history does not reach the start of your range is greyed out.
Results
When a session reaches the end of its range, or you press Finish, its results open on their own page: net P&L against the start balance, win rate, profit factor, expectancy, drawdown, the balance after each trade, the R-multiple distribution and, with a Blueprint, how the trades that followed every checklist item compare with the ones that did not. You can open the results at any time as the figures so far.
Sessions
A session is saved as you go. Leave it and Resume it from the list later — the chart comes back at the bar you reached, with its orders and practice trades. You can keep up to 50 sessions.
Backtesting is part of Pro — see the pricing page. A free trial can try it as its one Pro feature, with one session and up to 10 practice trades. Results describe past prices only. Past performance is not indicative of future results.