Paper Trading & Backtesting

Paper trading simulates live trading using real-time market prices from your selected exchange. Orders are filled instantly at the current market price with configurable slippage and fee simulation.

Follow these steps to begin a paper trading session:

1. Create a flow - Open the Flow Builder and design your strategy by connecting trigger, indicator, logic, and execution nodes. See the Flow Builder guide.
2. Set mode to Paper - In your Exchange Connect node, set the mode parameter to paper. No API keys are required.
3. Configure flow settings - Set the exchange, symbol, and timeframe in the flow settings panel.
4. Click Start - Press the Start button in the toolbar. The flow will begin executing and the Execution Panel at the bottom will display real-time updates.
5. Monitor in Execution Panel - The panel shows node-by-node logs, simulated fills, open positions, and running PnL. You can expand the panel for more detail.

Click Stop at any time to halt execution. Your paper trading history is preserved and can be reviewed later.

Backtesting replays your flow against historical candle data to evaluate how it would have performed over a specific time period. This is essential for validating strategy logic before paper or live trading.

Click the Backtest button in the toolbar. The engine will iterate through each historical candle, executing your flow at each step. Results are displayed when the backtest completes.

After a backtest completes, the following performance metrics are calculated and displayed:

• Start simple - Begin with a basic strategy (e.g., single indicator + threshold) and add complexity incrementally. This makes it easier to identify what works.
• Use multiple timeframes - Backtest your strategy across different timeframes (15m, 1h, 4h) to understand how it behaves in different market conditions.
• Include risk management - Always include Stop Loss, Position Size, and ideally a Kill Switch node in your flows. Never trade without defined risk.
• Beware of overfitting - If your strategy performs perfectly on historical data but uses many tightly tuned parameters, it may not generalize to live markets. Keep parameters reasonable.
• Paper trade before going live - Even after a successful backtest, run your strategy in paper trading for at least a few days to validate it with real-time data and live market conditions.
• Monitor drawdown - Pay close attention to max drawdown. A strategy with high returns but 50%+ drawdown may be too risky for your capital.
• Log everything - Add Logger nodes at key points in your flow to understand exactly why decisions are being made. This helps with debugging and optimization.