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Strategy Testing

Once you've watched the bot trade for a while, you might wonder: "Are these the best settings? Could it do better?" Strategy testing helps you answer that question.

What Is Backtesting?

Backtesting means replaying past market data through a strategy to see what would have happened. It's like rewinding time and asking: "If I'd followed these rules last month, would I have made money?"

No real money is involved — it's a simulation using historical prices.

Why bother?

If a strategy doesn't work on past data, it almost certainly won't work on future data either. Testing first saves you from running a bad strategy on your practice (or eventually, real) account.

Running Your First Backtest

  1. Click Strategy Testing in the top menu, then select Backtest
  2. You'll see a form with several fields — the defaults are sensible, so you can leave them as they are for your first run
  3. Click Run Backtest

That's it. The system will replay past gold prices through the strategy and show you the results.

First run takes a little longer

The first time you run a backtest, AurexTrade downloads historical data from OANDA. You'll see a "Downloading..." status — this typically takes 10–30 seconds. Subsequent runs reuse the cached data and are much faster.

Reading Your Results

After a few seconds, you'll see:

  • A metrics table — key numbers showing how the strategy performed
  • An equity curve — a chart showing how the account balance changed over time

The most important numbers to look at first:

Metric What it tells you
Total P&L Did the strategy make or lose money overall?
Win Rate What percentage of trades were profitable?
Max Drawdown What was the worst losing streak?

For detailed explanations of every metric, see Understanding Results.

Trying Different Settings

Go back to the form and change some parameters. For example, with Ciby Sliding Grid:

  • Try a wider Grid Spacing (e.g., 20) — fewer, more widely-spaced levels
  • Try a larger Stop Buffer (e.g., 3) — gives each leg more room before stopping out

Each combination will give different results. But testing one at a time is slow — which is where the next tools come in.

The 3-Step Workflow

AurexTrade provides three testing tools that build on each other:

1. Backtest  →  2. Sweep  →  3. Walk-Forward
   (does it       (find the     (prove it's
    work?)         best)         not luck)

Step 1: Backtest

Test a single set of parameters to confirm the strategy can work at all.

Step 2: Parameter Sweep

Instead of testing one setting at a time, the Sweep page tests hundreds of combinations automatically and ranks them. It finds the best settings for you.

Click Strategy Testing → Sweep, set the parameter ranges you want to explore, and let it run.

Step 3: Walk-Forward Validation

Found settings you like? Use Strategy Testing → Walk-Forward to check whether those settings genuinely work — or just got lucky on that specific data.

It splits the data into alternating "learning" and "exam" periods. If the settings work on the exam period (data they've never seen), they're more likely to be genuinely reliable.

Don't skip Walk-Forward

It's tempting to take the best sweep result and start trading immediately. But the best settings in a sweep are often overfit — they worked perfectly on that specific time period but will fail on new data. Walk-Forward catches this.

Saving Your Defaults

Once you've found settings you like, you can save them so all forms pre-fill automatically next time.

  1. Go to Settings in the top menu
  2. Under Strategy Defaults, pick a strategy, adjust the parameters, and click Save Strategy Defaults
  3. Under Risk & Cost Defaults, set your preferred values and click Save Risk Defaults

Reset to Defaults

Made a mess of the settings? Click Reset to Defaults to restore the original values instantly.

From Testing to Trading

Once you've found settings that pass all three steps (backtest, sweep, walk-forward), you can use those same settings when starting your bot.

Go to Trading Bot, select the strategy and parameters you validated, and start paper trading with confidence that you've done your homework.