How backtesting works
A backtest session replays past market data on the chart so you can trade it bar by bar, as if it were live. You control the clock: play it, step it one bar at a time, or jump ahead to the next session open. Every trade you take is saved like any other, so it can go into a playbook and your trades library.
Backtesting is on every plan, including Free. Open your sessions from Tools → Backtest.
Backtest or Chartnaut Demo
Chartnaut DemoBoth let you practise without real money. The difference is the market you trade.
Backtest session | Chartnaut Demo | |
|---|---|---|
Prices | Past market data, replayed | The live market |
Clock | Yours: play, pause, step, jump | Real time |
How you start | Tools → Backtest, then New session | |
Trades show as | Origin Backtest | Origin Live, marked Chartnaut Demo |
In the journal | No | Yes |
Use a backtest to get fifty examples of a setup in an afternoon. Use Chartnaut Demo to practise the real thing at the real speed.
Setting up a session
New session opens with two modes.
Quickstart is four short steps:
Instruments: what you want to trade. The History row shows the dates available for everything you picked.
Session: a name, and whether the Start is a Fixed date or a Random date.
Timing: how the session ends, and a real-time Duration if you want a time limit.
Account: the starting Balance, $100,000 unless you change it.
Advanced adds the settings a careful test needs:
Tab | What it sets |
|---|---|
General | The same instruments, dates and account as Quickstart |
Margin | Leverage, either per market or one number for everything |
Commissions | Trading costs per trade, by asset class |
Conditions | Slippage on fills |
Risk rules | Max drawdown, daily loss, position size and open positions, and whether a breach ends the session |
How far back you can go depends on your plan: 3 years on Free and Starter, all available history on Pro and Ultra. See Historical data.
Random dates
Random date is the default start. Chartnaut picks a Monday at random from the history your instruments share, and the session opens at 07:00 UTC that day. You did not choose the date, so you cannot remember what happens next, and your practice stays honest.
With a random start, End after stops the session after a set amount of simulated time, such as 5 days. With a fixed date, you pick the day in From, and turn on Until to set an End date.
Trading the replay
Start session opens the chart in Replay. The replay controls play and pause the market, step forward one bar, set the step timeframe and the playback speed, and jump to the next London, New York or Tokyo session or the next week. See Replay.
You place trades exactly as you would live, from the Position Manager. See Trading from the chart.
Reports
Every session has its own page with five tabs: Dashboard, Overview, Calendar, Trades and Reports. Reports breaks the session down by time of day, instrument, volatility, wins against losses, drawdown and more. You can add your own views there, as you can to every trade, journal day and playbook: see Views on backtest sessions. The full list is in Session reports.
Where the trades go
Every trade from a session is saved to Trades with its fills and chart snapshots, under the origin Backtest. Filter by Sessions to see one session's trades.
To build a playbook, file backtest trades into it as you place them or afterwards. They count towards Historical Intelligence while Backtest is switched on in the playbook's Data sources.
Backtest trades stay out of the journal, which records the days you traded a live market. The dashboard counts them under Backtest, and time spent in sessions under Practice.
To run your first session from start to finish, follow Backtest on random days or Start a session.