23. Backtesting Your Strategy with TradingView

With the strategy added to your chart, you can now backtest it.

  1. Open the Strategy Tester

    • At the bottom, next to the Pine Editor tab, click “Strategy Tester”.

  2. Key parts of the Strategy Tester

    • Overview tab:

      • Net Profit – total profit/loss over the backtest period.

      • Max Drawdown – the largest % drop from a peak in your equity curve.

        Lower drawdown = smoother, less painful strategy.

      • Profit Factor – gross profit divided by gross loss.

        1.0 is profitable, > 1.5 is decent, > 2.0 is strong.

      • Percent Profitable – win rate.

        High win rate with tiny wins isn’t always better than lower win rate with big wins.

    • Performance Summary / List of Trades:

      • Shows each trade, PnL, duration, etc.

    • Equity Curve:

      • Graph of your account curve over time. You want it to generally trend up, with drawdowns you can emotionally tolerate.

  3. Deep Backtesting (Premium/paid plans)

    • On free plans, TradingView limits how far back you can test on lower timeframes.

    • With paid plans, especially Premium, you can:

      • Backtest further back in time, especially on 1m / 5m / 15m charts.

      • This gives you a better idea how the strategy behaves across different market cycles.

  4. Test different pairs and timeframes with strategy

    • backtest a variety of different pairs and timeframes to find the right combination for your strategy!

  5. TradingView plans & alerts

    • Each plan has:

      • A maximum number of simultaneous alerts.

      • A maximum backtest depth.

    • If you’re not on Premium, remember:

      • Alerts will expire after a period (Between 1–2 months).

      • You must periodically extend/reactivate your alerts:

        • Go to Alerts → edit your strategy alerts → extend expiration date.

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