Been trading for a few months now and want to properly test my strategy before risking more capital.
Is manual backtesting on historical charts enough or should I invest in proper backtesting software? What’s been working for you guys?
I started with manual backtesting years ago. Spent hours marking entry/exit points on paper charts. It works but you’ll miss things and it’s incredibly slow.
MT4’s strategy tester worked well for basic strategies. It’s free and gets the job done if your logic isn’t complicated.
Now I use TradingView’s backtesting for most tests. Good data quality and I can code my rules properly. Costs money but saves tons of time.
Big tip - always test on fresh data you haven’t touched. Learned this the hard way when my “perfect” backtest crashed in live trading because I’d over-optimized on the same dataset.
Manual backtesting is a good start. It takes time and can let some details slip through.
MT4 offers solid tools for basic strategies, and TradingView’s replay feature is free and very useful.
Stick with what you have before spending on costly software.
Excel works fine for simple strategies if you don’t mind the manual work. Just download historical data and track your signals by hand.
Software’s faster, but I’d start with the basics first.
Start with your broker’s built-in tools. Most have basic backtesting in MT4 or MT5 for free. Manual testing takes forever and you’ll mess up the math - your time’s worth more than that. Get clean data first though. Garbage tick data equals garbage results. Free tools often use sketchy data that makes strategies look way better than they actually are. Test across different timeframes and market conditions. What works in trending markets usually bombs when things go sideways.