Learn the lab
Five short guides. Start with the first one; it takes about two minutes.
1Run your first backtestSet a rule, pick coins and dates, press Run.
2Read your resultsThe numbers that matter, with rules of thumb.
3Skill or luck?Check whether the result can be trusted.
4Find better settingsGrid and Optimizer, without over-fitting.
5Compare your live tradingUpload your trades and see where they differ.
1 · Run your first backtest FREE
- Open the lab. Want to see what results look like first? Press See sample results instantly. It uses made-up coins and needs no download. Press Exit sample when you are done.
- Step 1 · Your rule. Choose Direction (buy = long, or short), whether the coin must rise or fall, by how much (Threshold %), within how many hours, and the profit you want to take (Target %), an optional Stop-loss %, the Amount per trade and how many trades can be open at once (Trade slots). Example: short a coin when it rises 20% within 24 hours, take profit at 20%.
- Step 2 · Test period. Pick Last 1 month, Last 3 months, a financial year, or your own dates.
- Step 3 · Coins to test. The top 50 coins are already selected. Use Coin lists to tick one or more lists (Top 10, Top 50, CoinDCX, all futures), or Coins to search and tick single coins.
- Press Run backtest ▶. The first run downloads hourly prices to your browser, which can take a minute or two. Later runs over the same dates are much faster.
Keep the settings on Simple at first. Advanced adds money per trade, stop-loss, time limits and filters once you are comfortable.
2 · Read your results FREE
The Results summary tab gives the headline. The Insights tab breaks it down: winners against losers, plus filters for coin, month, weekday and hour. Here are the numbers to look at first:
| Number | What it means | Rule of thumb |
|---|---|---|
| Profit / loss on the end date | Closed trades plus open trades valued at the end-date price. Open losses are counted, not hidden. | Compare with holding BTC, or a bank deposit, over the same dates. |
| Win rate | Share of closed trades that made money. | Means little on its own: a 40% win rate can be very profitable if wins are much bigger than losses. |
| Expectancy per trade | Average profit per trade after fees. | Must be above zero, and well above the fee per trade. |
| Profit factor | Money won ÷ money lost. | Below 1 loses. 1–1.5 is thin. 1.5–3 is healthy. Above 4 with few trades is often over-fitted. |
| Worst weekly open loss | The deepest paper loss you would have had to sit through. | Under 20% is comfortable for most people; above 40% is very hard with real money. |
| Trades | How many trades the result is based on. | Under 30 trades, treat the result as a first look only. |
In Insights, use the filters (for example Coin or Hour) to see whether the profit comes from everywhere or from one coin or one lucky month. The same filters also narrow the Trade log.
3 · Skill or luck? BASIC
- After a run, open More analysis ▾ and choose Science.
- Read the Verdict at the top first. It says in plain words whether the edge looks real.
- Check the edge t-statistic: under 1 could easily be luck, 1–2 is weak, 2 or more is unlikely to be luck alone.
- Look at the Luck check table. If removing your best five trades turns the result negative, the profit rests on a handful of lucky trades.
- The Monte Carlo reshuffles your trades 2,000 times. Plan your money around the "95% worst" drawdown, not the typical one.
The Insights tab also shows a short stress-test summary, the profit calendar, results by weekday and hour, losing trades that were in profit first, and drawdown with recovery time.
4 · Find better settings BASIC
- Grid runs many threshold and target combinations at once. Enter a few values for each and run it.
- Look for a green area in the heatmap (in Science), not a single green cell. A lone best cell surrounded by red usually means over-fitting: it worked by chance on this data.
- Optimizer tests exits (profit targets and stops) on your trades, to show where taking profit or cutting losses earned the most.
- Before trusting a setting, test it on a different period it was not tuned on (for example, tune on last year and check on this year).
If Insights shows many losing trades that were in profit first (above about 25%), test a stop at breakeven or a partial take-profit in Advanced settings.
5 · Compare your live trading BASIC
- Run a backtest covering the same dates as your live or paper trades.
- Prepare a CSV of your trades with these columns: symbol entry_time entry_price exit_time exit_price. pnl and reason are optional. Leave the exit columns empty for trades still open.
- Open Live vs backtest, choose the file, say whether its times are IST or UTC, and press Compare.
- Each live trade is matched to the backtest trade in the same coin opened within the match window. You see trades you missed, extra trades you took, and differences in entry and exit prices.
Backtests show what would have happened on past prices. They do not predict future results and are not investment advice.