Dashboard and tester
The backtest dashboard row by row, and two things in the TradingView tester that look like bugs but aren't.
The dashboard is a table in the corner of the chart (top right by default; Position in 📊 Backtest). It counts what the TradingView tester can't show directly: trades as the bot sees them, with all their adds, per side.
Two words used below:
- trade: one entry plus all its adds, closed by one common exit. That's how the bot and the exchange see it.
- tester entry: one row in TradingView's list of trades. A trade with two adds is three tester entries.
Row by row
The header shows Backtest from … · zone: …: the start time from 📅 Bot start (or history start if the date filter is off) and the general signal zone. The two columns are the long bot and the short bot, named by Long bot name and Short bot name.
| Row | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Trades (closed) | Closed trades per side. |
| no adds / with 1 adds / with 2 adds … | How many of those closed without an add, with one add, with two, up to Max adds. |
| Open now | 1 if that side has a position open on the last bar. |
| Trades with HTF adds | Shown only when an add level uses a higher timeframe: trades that had such an add, and in brackets the number of those adds (legs). |
| Closed by stop | Shown only when a stop loss is on: trades closed by a stop (stop loss, signal stop, time stop, line stop). |
| Max adverse move | The furthest price went against a trade, from its first entry, in %. The worst value per side. |
| Avg add depth | The same measure averaged over all closed trades of that side. |
| Time in trade, h (min/avg/max) | Hours from the first entry to the exit: shortest, average, longest. |
| Profit, USDT | Net result of the closed trades of that side, after the tester's commission. |
| avg per trade | That net divided by the number of closed trades. |
| Max drawdown (equity) | The deepest drop of the strategy's equity over the whole backtest, in USDT and in % of initial capital. One value for the whole strategy, not per side. The same number as in the tester's own report. |
| Hedges (BE/trend) | Shown only when hedging is on: hedge episodes, and in brackets how many ended at break-even and how many on a trend change. |
The row to look at first
Max drawdown (equity). It includes the open trades' floating loss at their worst point, so it's the closest thing to "how much this would have hurt". Size the account against that number in USDT, plus the full cascade of every symbol you run. The net result tells you much less: with the stop loss off, a trade that's deep under water hasn't closed yet and isn't in the net at all.
Max adverse move is a different thing: how far price moved against one trade. A 30% adverse move with a drawdown of a few percent means the cascade was small relative to capital. The same move with a big cascade is a different story.
Two tester quirks
"Losing trades" without any stop. The tester counts every tester entry as a trade, and computes each entry's result from its own entry price. When an averaged position closes at its common TP, the first entries of the cascade look like big losses and the last, biggest one like a big win. They share one exit time and one exit price; their sum is a normal TP from the average price. Example: entries of 500, 2,000 and 6,013 USDT close at −192.19, +8.11 and +194.31, which is +10.23 for the trade. No liquidation, nothing wrong. To see trades as the bot sees them, export the tester's CSV and group rows by exit time, or read the dashboard.
Labels instead of trade lines. The strategy doesn't draw entry and exit lines for past trades (they broke Deep Backtesting on long histories). Instead, Show take profit level draws a stepped line at the current TP target over the whole history, and trade labels show each fill as SIGNAL size (total), for example CONSENSUS 2000 (2500). Adds from a higher timeframe carry the timeframe: FADE 15m 2000 (2500).
Tester settings that move the numbers
Set in the Properties tab, defaults from the script:
| Property | Default | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Initial capital | 10,000 USDT | The drawdown % is measured against it. |
| Commission | 0.04% per order | Every entry, add and exit pays it. Use your exchange's actual rate. |
| Slippage | 1 tick | Applied to market fills. |
| Margin long / short | 10% | Equals 10x leverage. At the Pine default of 100%, the tester silently rejects large adds that an exchange at 10x would fill. |
Funding isn't modelled by the TradingView tester at all. On perpetual futures, a position held for days pays or receives funding every few hours; the backtest doesn't show it. More on what a backtest can and can't tell you: Backtest methodology.