What your TradingView backtest isn't telling you
A Strategy Tester summary gives you one profit factor for every trade. Your NQ or ES strategy does not earn it evenly. Here are the five conditions the summary averages away, and how to see them in your own list of trades.
1. The hour of the day
NQ and ES trade very differently at the 9:30 open, through the late morning, over lunch and into the close. A strategy with a 1.4 profit factor overall can be a 2.5 in the first hour and below 1 after noon. Cutting the losing hours is often the cheapest improvement there is, and the summary never shows it.
2. The gamma regime
When options dealers are long gamma, they sell rallies and buy dips, and the index tends to mean-revert. When they are short gamma, they chase moves, and breakouts follow through. A breakout strategy and a fade strategy should not perform the same on both sides of the gamma flip, and with 0-DTE options now a large share of the volume, the effect shows up within the day.
3. The distance from VWAP
Entries far from the session VWAP and entries right on it are different trades, even when the strategy's rules call them the same. Measured in ATR, the distance from VWAP at entry is one of the most common splits between a strategy's winning and losing trades.
4. Economic releases
CPI, payrolls, FOMC and the other scheduled releases move NQ and ES in seconds. Trades opened just before a release, or in the minutes after it, behave differently from the rest of the day. A backtest that runs straight through them mixes two kinds of trades.
5. The exit you didn't test
The Strategy Tester runs the exit you coded. It does not tell you what a wider stop, a closer target or a time stop would have done to the same entries. Testing exits fairly means simulating each alternative forward, bar by bar, with no knowledge of what came next.
How to see all five in your own trades
Export the List of trades from the Strategy Tester (the steps are in how to backtest on TradingView) and upload it to QuantLogic Trade Analytics. The file is read in any interface language; the instrument (NQ, MNQ, ES or MES) is recognised from the prices.
Every trade is placed on its 1-minute bars with VWAP, the gamma levels and the economic calendar. What works and What doesn't rank the conditions by net profit over enough trades, and the best combination of up to four of them is searched for you. Every data point uses only what was known at entry. From a finding, you can build an indicator that lights up when the conditions line up again.
Upload your list of trades
Export the List of trades from the Strategy Tester, upload it, and see your strategy split by time of day, gamma regime, VWAP and releases, with exits tested bar by bar. Explore the free demo first: no card needed.
No card needed for the demo. Read-only: QuantLogic never places orders.
Questions
- Can a backtest tell me if my strategy is overfitted?
- Not from the trades alone. Overfitting is about how the rules were chosen, and a list of trades cannot show that. What the trades can show is whether the results come from a few conditions or from all of them, which is the first thing to know before trading it.
- How many trades do I need before splitting results by condition?
- Around 100 trades for the whole strategy, and enough in each group that one or two big trades do not decide it. QuantLogic marks findings that rest on too few trades.
- Does QuantLogic use future data when it analyzes my trades?
- No. Every data point uses only what was known at the trade's entry, and alternative exits are simulated forward, bar by bar. That is checked automatically before an indicator is built.
More free guides and tools
How to backtest on TradingView (free)
Run a strategy in the Strategy Tester, export the list of trades, and see what it really does.
TradingView Strategy Tester explained
Every tab and setting of the Strategy Tester, in plain words.
NQ and ES futures P&L calculator
Points, ticks and dollars for NQ, MNQ, ES and MES, with commissions and R multiple.
Trailing drawdown calculator
Track a prop-firm drawdown day by day: end-of-day, intraday or static.
Educational content, not investment advice. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss. See the risk disclosure.