---
title: Reading the Strategy Tester
description: >-
  A tour of the Strategy Tester panel: the Overview, Performance, and Trades
  tabs, the chart markers, the run-details disclosures, and compare mode.
---

Run any strategy script and the Strategy Tester panel opens under the chart. This page is the map: what each tab shows, what the chart draws, and where the honesty disclosures live. If you have not run a backtest yet, start with [Build Your First Strategy](first-strategy.md).

```text
 [ MA Cross  +2.4% ] [ RSI Revert  -0.8% ]      (compare)  (i)  (v)
 ------------------------------------------------------------------
  Overview | Performance | Trades (24)
 ------------------------------------------------------------------
   net profit   win rate   profit factor   max DD   sharpe   trades
      equity curve ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      drawdown lane ______________________________________
```

## The strategy tabs

Every strategy on the chart gets its own tab in the panel header, with its identity color and its net PnL as a chip. Click a tab to switch the panel to that strategy; the eye toggles the strategy's plots and markers on the chart without removing it. The tabs are independent: adding, hiding, or removing one strategy never disturbs another's results.

## Overview

The at-a-glance read: an equity curve with a drawdown lane under it, and the headline tiles alongside: net profit, win rate, profit factor, max drawdown, Sharpe, and total trades. A buy-and-hold benchmark can be overlaid on the equity curve; if your rules do not beat doing nothing after costs, the market did the work, not the rules.

## Performance

The full stat table, grouped into returns, risk, and trade quality: gross profit and loss, payoff ratio, Sharpe and Sortino, max runup, exposure, average trade, fees paid, and the ambiguous-fill count. Every number here has an exact formula and edge-case behavior documented in the [Stats Reference](stats-reference.md).

## Trades

The numbered list of closed trades: side, quantity, entry and exit bars, PnL in cash and percent, cumulative PnL, and how the trade exited (`signal`, `stop`, `limit`, `trail`, `closeAll`, `liquidation`, `endOfData`). The count badge on the tab is this list's row count. Open positions and pending orders sit in their own sections below, so a strategy still holding into the last bar is visible but never confused with a completed trade.

Two things worth knowing:

- **Click a row** and the chart scrolls to that trade. **Hover a row** and the trade lights up on the chart with a band from entry to exit.
- A **"± fill" badge** on a trade means the fill was settled by the declared fill model rather than data: the bar could not prove whether the stop or the target traded first, and no finer data covered it. [Fill Simulation](fill-simulation.md) explains exactly when this happens.

## What the chart draws

Entries and exits render as chevrons on the bars that filled them: filled chevrons for entries, hollow for exits, colored by direction, with the strategy's identity color on the outline so multi-strategy charts stay readable. Past 150 closed trades the markers collapse into count pills so the chart stays legible, and the panel footer says so explicitly.

## Run details: the honesty popover

The info icon in the panel header opens the run's own disclosure: chart interval, bars computed, the declared fill model, compute time, and two lines worth reading before you trust any result:

- **Fill precision**: `exact`, `verified on 1m + 5m data`, `N of M contested fills verified`, or `bar resolution`. This is the simulation grading itself; the tiers are defined in [Fill Simulation](fill-simulation.md).
- **Slippage** (for `slippageModel="bookEstimate"` runs): the average book impact applied and how many fills fell back to the declared rate. See [Slippage and Costs](slippage-and-costs.md).

## Compare mode

With two or more visible strategies, the compare button switches the panel to a side-by-side view: net profit, win rate, profit factor, max drawdown, Sharpe, and trade counts per strategy, plus a **Combined** column that treats them as one equal-notional portfolio. The equity chart overlays each strategy's normalized return with the combined curve, and a pairwise correlation line quantifies how much diversification the combination actually buys: two strategies that win at different times can show a combined drawdown lower than either leg's.

Chart markers are suppressed while comparing so the overlay stays readable; leave compare mode (or hide all but one strategy) and they return.