Run your first backtest

A backtest replays a strategy against historical price data and reports how it would have performed. AlgoTrader ships with a handful of built-in strategies so you can get a feel before writing your own.

Step by step

1. Open Backtests in the sidebar, then New backtest.
2. Strategy: pick one — MACD Momentum is a good first run.
3. Symbol: type a ticker (e.g. INFY, RELIANCE, NIFTY 50).
4. Date range: leave the default (last 12 months) or pick your own.
5. Capital: starting capital, default ₹1,00,000.
6. Hit Run.

The first run on a new symbol fetches data from Kite — expect 1-2 seconds. Subsequent runs use the local cache and complete in milliseconds.

Reading the result

You land on the result detail page with four panels:

• Equity curve — how your capital evolved over the run.
• Trade list — every entry / exit with P&L, slippage, brokerage.
• Summary stats — total return, annualised return, max drawdown, Sharpe, win-rate.
• Chart — price + indicators + buy/sell markers, zoomable.

Costs model

The default cost model uses flat-rate brokerage (0.1%) + slippage (0.05%) per side. This matches the discount-broker norm but isn't a literal Zerodha tariff — for the latter we'll have an explicit "Zerodha charges" option soon.

Next steps

• Tweak the strategy parameters — open the backtest detail page, click Re-run with parameters to change things like EMA periods, stop-loss %, etc.
• Compare two runs — the Compare page puts two backtests side by side.
• Optimize — the Optimizer runs a grid search across a parameter range.
• Paper trade the strategy — if backtest looks promising, the next step is paper trading before risking real money.