TradingView Strategy Tester: How to start

A Strategy Tester is a tool for testing trading ideas. Indicators display data and signals on the chart, while strategies automatically generate a result report.

How to launch a strategy

On Supercharts, click the "Indicators" button in the upper toolbar or use the " / " hotkey.
Use the search bar or select a strategy manually in Technicals → Strategies or Community.

When selected, the Strategy Tester will open at the bottom of the screen.

The Strategy Tester opens automatically when you add any strategy and shows how your trading system would have performed on historical data. Only one strategy can run on a chart at a time.

Types of strategies

Built-in Strategies: Ready-made by TradingView for a quick start.
Community strategies: Created by other traders and available for free, located under Indicators → Community.
My strategies: Your own strategies written in Pine Script, or those you’ve saved to Favorites.

Interface

Overview

When you add a strategy, the "Overview" tab displays the key metrics and charts:

Strategy chart: Shows how equity changes over time. Its appearance depends on the selected strategy
Date range: Allows you to select the time period for displaying results
Total P&L: Overall profit or loss (shown in currency and percentage)
Max equity drawdown: The greatest loss drawdown, i.e., the greatest possible loss the strategy had compared to its highest profits
Total trades: The total number of closed trades, winning and losing
Profitable trades: The percentage of winning trades, the number of winning trades divided by the total number of closed trades
Profit factor: The amount of money the strategy made for every unit of money it lost, gross profits divided by gross losses
Buy&hold: Adds an alternative buy-and-hold scenario to the chart for comparison with the strategy
Trades run-up&drawdown: Displays the extreme values for each trade: maximum unrealized profit (run-up) and maximum drawdown (drawdown)

When you hover over the chart, detailed information appears:

Trade number and type
Cumulative P&L
Date and time
Buy & hold (if Buy&hold is enabled)
Run-up (if Trades run-up&drawdown is enabled)
Drawdown (if Trades run-up&drawdown is enabled)

Performance

The "Performance" tab provides detailed trading statistics, with separate metrics available for all trades, as well as for longs and shorts:

Open P&L
Net profit
Gross profit
Gross loss
Commission paid
Buy & hold return
Max equity run-up
Max equity drawdown
Max contracts held

Trades analysis

The "Trades analysis" tab provides detailed statistics about trade outcomes, including separate metrics for longs and shorts:

Total trades
Total open trades
Winning trades
Losing trades
Percent profitable
Avg P&L
Avg winning trade
Avg losing trade
Ratio avg win / avg loss
Largest winning trade
Largest winning trade percent
Largest losing trade
Largest losing trade percent
Avg # bars in trades
Avg # bars in winning trades
Avg # bars in losing trades

Risk/performance ratios

The "Risk/performance ratios" tab provides additional metrics that help evaluate the risk-adjusted performance of the strategy, with separate values for longs and shorts:

Sharpe ratio
Sortino ratio
Profit factor
Margin calls

List of trades

The "List of trades" tab shows a complete record of all executed trades with detailed parameters in table format:

Trade #
Type
Date/Time
Signal
Price
Position size
Net P&L
Run-up
Drawdown
Cumulative P&L