How to read your WickCheck resultsBeginner

What each number means and the order to look at them in.

1. Did it read my rules right?

Check 'How I read your strategy' first. If the engine understood something different from what you meant, the numbers are about a different strategy.

2. Is the sample big enough?

Look at the number of trades. Under 30, treat everything else as a rough hint.

3. Profit factor and average trade

Above 1 made money after costs, below 1 lost. The average trade in R tells you how much each trade earned on average.

4. Drawdown and the curve

A smooth rising curve is better than one big jump. Check the deepest drop.

5. Robustness

Look at results by year and the Monte Carlo check in Trades & stats. Then run the same rules on another market. If it only works in one place and one year, be careful.

6. Look at the trades

Open a few trades on the chart. Do they look like the setup you had in mind? This is where most rule mistakes show up.

Try it on your own strategy

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More lessons

Why most strategies need a human behind the screenWhat a backtest can and cannot tell you about discretionary trading, and how to use both.Trading sessions and killzones: times, what happens in each, and how to test themAsian, London and New York sessions and the ICT killzones, with exact times in New York and London time, daylight saving notes and test rules.What a backtest is, and what it is notThe basics in five minutes: rules, data, costs and the limits of testing the past.How costs quietly eat small edgesSpread, commission and slippage explained, and why tight stops make them worse.Why 30 trades prove nothingHow luck hides in small samples and how many trades you actually need.When a great result is just luck: overfittingHow to tell a real edge from a curve-fitted one.R, risk per trade and drawdown in plain wordsHow position size, R-multiples and drawdown fit together.

Education only, not financial advice. Definitions vary between teachers; these are ours, written for clarity.