Backtester
Use the TraderWaves Backtester to replay historical price action, practise placing trades and review how a strategy performed. Here are the answers to the most common questions about getting started.
Getting started
The Backtester is a historical market replay tool. It lets you move through past price action, place simulated trades and review the results without using live money. See the Backtester page for an overview of the feature.
No. Backtesting is included with Pro, which currently provides unlimited backtesting sessions. See the Pricing page for the latest plan details.
You can start a new session in a few steps:
- Open Backtester from the TraderWaves navigation.
- Choose the market and instrument you want to test.
- Select a timeframe and historical period.
- Start the replay and pause when you want to place a simulated trade.
Give the session a clear name if you plan to compare it with other tests.
TraderWaves supports a selection of stocks, forex, crypto, indices, futures and commodities. Search inside the Backtester to see whether a particular instrument is currently available.
Replay and simulated trading
Historical replay reveals past candles in sequence, so you make decisions without seeing what happens next. You can move candle by candle or let the chart play automatically.
Yes! Use the playback controls to pause, rewind, move forward or change the speed. Replay speeds currently range from 0.1× to 64×.
Yes! You can place buy and sell orders, use pending orders, add a stop-loss and take-profit, and practise scaling in or out of a position. These trades are simulated and do not affect a live trading account. To plan size and risk first, see the Calculators.
These settings control how realistic your backtest fills and costs are. Start with a simulation mode profile, or choose Custom if you want every control unlocked.
- Execution: set how spreads and slippage are applied, whether orders fill in sequence, and how fills are treated when they happen on the same candle.
- Holding costs: set commission and overnight holding costs, including swap and rollover assumptions.
- Risk controls: set margin, stop-out and symbol constraints, including liquidation behaviour.
Yes. You can mark up the replay chart with tools such as trendlines, levels, Fibonacci retracements and rulers. You can also add supported indicators, including moving averages, RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, VWAP and ATR.
Yes. Session times and economic events can be shown alongside the historical chart, helping you review the market context around a setup.
Yes. Add notes while the session is running to record why you entered, exited or skipped a trade. This gives you more context when you review the session later.
Reviewing your backtest
Once your backtesting session is complete, you can review your performance in the session summary, including profit and loss, win rate, expectancy, trade statistics and average holding time. You can also open the chart to review each simulated trade in context. For more on metrics such as expectancy and win rate, see Calculators.
No. A backtest uses historical prices and simulated trades. Live results can differ because of spreads, slippage, execution, changing market conditions and trading behaviour.
Troubleshooting
Check that your Pro subscription is active and that you have selected an instrument, timeframe and historical period. See Pricing if you need to confirm what is included. Wait for the chart to finish loading before starting the replay. If it still does not work, email info@traderwaves.com.
First, check that the instrument appears in the Backtester search. Try another timeframe, then refresh the page. If the chart still does not load, contact info@traderwaves.com.
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