How the backtester works

1. Timeframe. Any timeframe you like — 15m, 1H, 4H, even 7H. Candles start at the 18:00 New York daily open, like most gold brokers. All times on the site are New York time.
2. Rules (confluences). Every rule you switch on must agree. A buy happens when all bullish conditions line up on a closed candle, a sell when all bearish ones line up. Time rules (killzones, days) just allow or block.
3. Signals that "stay valid". Events like a sweep, SMT or MSS happen on one candle — "stays valid for N candles" lets them combine with things that happen a bit later (e.g. sweep → SMT → MSS).
4. Entry. Market = open of the next candle. Limit in FVG = waits for price to come back into the latest Fair Value Gap.
5. Results. Each trade ends in TP SL BE or Time (closed at your exit time). If one candle touches both SL and TP, it counts as SL — the honest, worst case.
6. R = profit measured in risk units. +2R means you made twice what you risked. Money figures use your balance × risk %.
7. Drawing tools. The toolbar on the left of every chart has trend lines, rays, horizontal and vertical lines, Fib (including ICT OTE 0.62 / 0.705 / 0.79), channels, rectangles for FVG and order-block zones, long and short positions, measure, brush, text, labels and emojis. Hover a tool and click the small › to see more in its group. Click a drawing to move it, recolour it, lock it or delete it (Del key). Drawings are saved and stay in place on every timeframe. Shortcuts: Alt+T trend, Alt+H horizontal, Alt+F fib, Alt+R rectangle, Alt+L / Alt+S long / short, Alt+M measure, Esc cancel.
8. Live Chart. TradingView's own live chart with all of their tools and indicators, for analysing the market right now.
9. Combining strategies. Save each idea you learn as its own strategy. On My Strategies you can compare them on the same months, or merge their rules into one combined strategy and test that.

Backtests show what would have happened in the past with these exact rules — they are a study tool, not a promise of future results. 💛