Backtesting and forward testing on AnalyticsFX

A strategy you have only looked at on a finished chart has not been tested. You already know where the move went before you place the trade. Backtesting on AnalyticsFX hides the future and makes you trade it bar by bar. Forward testing then puts the same rules on live prices, where nobody knows what comes next.

Bar replay

Start a session from Backtesting. Choose a market, a start date (or press Random), a starting balance and leverage. The session opens on that date and nothing after it is visible.

• Play, pause and step. Play and pause with the space bar at 1x, 3x, 5x or 10x, or move forward one bar at a time.
• Replay step. The step is set separately from the chart's timeframe. A step finer than the chart lets you watch the candle form; a coarser step fast-forwards through several bars.
• Jump to a date. Move to another date in the market's history. Open positions are closed at the current price and pending orders are cancelled first, so nothing is carried across the jump.
• Switch timeframes at any time. From 1 minute to monthly, including 3-minute and 3-day bars, plus your own custom timeframes on Core and above.
• Blind drop. Drop into a random market on a random date with both hidden. Trade what you see, then reveal the symbol and your result.

The order panel

The same order panel is used in backtesting, in forward testing and in the Arena.

• Market and limit orders. A limit fills when a bar trades through its level.
• Stop loss and take profit. Add a stop and up to six take-profit levels, each closing a share of the position, with the last one closing whatever remains. Drag the lines on the chart or type the prices.
• Break-even. Set a trigger price. When price reaches it, the stop moves to your entry, once.
• Partial closes and edits. Close part of a position from the close dialog, or change the stop and target of an open trade.

Fills follow fixed, conservative rules. Market orders fill at the bar's close. A stop that price gaps through fills at the bar's open. When one bar touches both the stop and the target, the stop counts first.

Lots, margin or risk

Size every trade in one of three ways: in lots, by the margin you commit, or by what you lose if the stop is hit. Margin and risk can be set in dollars or as a percentage of equity. Sizing by risk needs a stop, and the size is rounded down, so a trade never risks more than the budget you set.

Why you took the trade

Every trade can carry confluences, notes and screenshots.

• Confluences. Tag the setup reasons from presets such as trend alignment, liquidity sweep or fair value gap, or add your own.
• Notes and screenshots. Write what you saw, then move the chart and capture as many views as you like. With auto-screenshot on, a capture is also taken on every fill and every full close.
• Playbooks. Turn your rules into a checklist that appears before each trade, either as a reminder or as a hard block.
• Missed trades. Log a setup you saw but did not take. Pin the bar, set a stop and a target, and the outcome is resolved later, so you can see what hesitation cost you or saved you.

Analytics

The session overview reads every trade. It starts with the numbers: ending balance, net P&L, win rate, profit factor, expectancy, average and largest win and loss, max drawdown, average R, average risk and average hold time. Below them you find long versus short, weekday and session breakdowns, the equity curve, a performance calendar, which confluences paid, a Monte Carlo of your trades with the risk of ruin, a discipline score, playbook adherence and your missed trades. Combine several sessions into a group to read them as one.

Fills in the replay do not include spread or commission. The Execution realism card applies the spread, slippage and commission you enter afterwards and shows an ideal and a realistic equity curve side by side, so you see how much friction would have taken from the result.

Core adds three cards: trade management (how far each trade ran for and against you, and how much was left on the table), the exit optimizer (a grid of stop and target sizes based on your own trades) and the fundamental overlay.

Forward testing

A forward test is a demo account on live prices. Create one under Forward testing with a name, a balance and leverage. Balance and leverage are fixed once the account exists, so results stay comparable over time. Optional settings add prop-firm rules (a daily loss cap, max drawdown, a profit target, minimum trading days and a consistency rule), slippage and delay, and commission. A breach freezes the account and produces a breach report.

The server decides

Your browser never decides when a stop or a target is hit. Every minute, our servers check each open position and pending order against the latest one-minute bars, using the same broker rules as the backtest. If a check is ever missed, the next one replays the bars in between instead of skipping them. Stops and targets trigger while your tab is closed, and a manual close is priced on the server from the last one-minute close.

Several markets on one account

One account can hold positions on several FX pairs at the same time, and the margin stop-out is judged across the whole account. The order panel, the sizing modes and the confluence notes are the same as in the backtest.

From backtest to forward

Promote a backtest session to forward and the new account takes over its market, balance and leverage. Its overview then compares the live results with the backtest: expectancy, win rate, average R, hold time, drawdown and how often you trade. A readiness score from 0 to 100 sums up the sample size, how stable the expectancy is, the drawdown headroom, rule adherence and consistency. On Core and above, a weekly email digest summarises your forward week.

What each plan includes

• Free: one backtest session that starts within the last 11 months, with the full order panel and the standard analytics.
• Core: unlimited sessions on more than 20 years of history, groups, blind drops, unlimited playbooks, auto-screenshots, the three Core analytics cards, and forward testing with 2 accounts and the weekly digest.
• Terminal: 5 forward testing accounts.
• Pro: 10 forward testing accounts.

Plans are billed in euros, including VAT. See the plans for the full comparison.

What a backtest is not

A backtest replays the past under simplified fills. It is a way to practise execution and to find out whether a set of rules held up, not a prediction of what the next trades will do. A forward test on demo money is the next, harder check, and it is still not live trading with real money, real slippage and real nerves. Size live positions so that you can be wrong, because some of the time you will be.