Event-Level Replay

Event-level replay lets you step through your backtest execution one market event at a time, giving you complete visibility into every decision your strategy made and why it made it. Instead of reviewing aggregate results, you can watch your strategy respond to each tick, bar close, or indicator update in sequence — making it the most powerful debugging and learning tool in Arconomy.

What Is Event-Level Replay?

During a backtest, Arconomy's engine processes thousands of individual market events — price ticks, candle closes, indicator recalculations, and order executions. Each of these events can trigger rule evaluations, state changes, and trade decisions within your strategy. Event-level replay records every one of these events and lets you navigate through them at your own pace after the backtest completes.

Think of it as a DVR for your strategy's decision-making process. You can play forward through events in real time, step through them one by one, jump to specific moments of interest, or scrub through the timeline to find the exact point where something unexpected happened.

Every event in the replay includes:

• Timestamp — The exact date and time the event occurred in the historical data.
• Event type — Whether this was a price tick, candle close, indicator update, order fill, or another event category.
• Market state — The bid, ask, spread, and last traded price at the moment of the event.
• Rule evaluations — Which rules were evaluated, what inputs they received, and what output they produced.
• State changes — Any rules that changed state (for example, from waiting to triggered) as a result of this event.
• Actions taken — Any orders placed, modified, or cancelled as a direct result of this event.

Accessing Event Replay

Event-level replay is available for any completed backtest. To access it:

1. Navigate to the Backtesting section of your strategy and select a completed backtest run from the results list.
2. In the backtest results view, click the Event Replay tab in the top navigation bar. This tab sits alongside the Summary, Trade Timeline, and Performance Metrics tabs.
3. The replay interface will load with the timeline positioned at the first event. The chart will display the price action for the backtest period, and the event panel will show details for the current event.

Stepping Through Events

The replay interface provides several controls for navigating through the event timeline:

Playback Controls

At the bottom of the replay interface, you will find a set of transport controls similar to a media player:

• Play / Pause — Start or stop automatic playback through events. Events will advance at the selected playback speed.
• Step Forward — Advance to the next event in the sequence. This is the most common way to navigate when you want to carefully examine each decision.
• Step Backward — Return to the previous event. All state changes are reversed so you see the exact state before the current event was processed.
• Jump to Start / End — Move to the first or last event in the backtest.
• Playback Speed — Adjust how fast events advance during automatic playback: 1x, 2x, 5x, 10x, or 50x speed.

Timeline Scrubber

The timeline scrubber is a horizontal bar that represents the full duration of the backtest. You can click anywhere on the scrubber to jump to that point in time. The scrubber also shows visual markers for significant events — trade entries and exits are marked with coloured dots so you can quickly navigate to the moments that matter most.

Drag the scrubber handle to smoothly scroll through the timeline. As you drag, the chart and event panel update in real time to show the state at the current position.

Event Filters

Not every event is equally interesting. Use the event filter dropdown to focus on specific event types:

• All Events — Show every event in the sequence (default).
• Trade Events Only — Show only events where an order was placed, filled, modified, or cancelled.
• State Changes Only — Show only events where at least one rule changed state.
• Candle Closes — Show only events that correspond to candle close boundaries on the selected timeframe.
• Custom Filter — Define your own filter based on specific rules, event types, or conditions.

When a filter is active, the step forward and step backward buttons skip over events that do not match the filter, letting you move quickly between the events you care about.

Viewing Rule State at Each Event

The right-hand panel of the replay interface displays the complete state of every rule in your strategy at the current event. Each rule is shown with:

• Rule name and type — The name you gave the rule and its category (entry, exit, filter, or risk).
• Current state — Whether the rule is active, triggered, waiting, or disabled at this point in time. States are colour-coded for quick scanning.
• Input values — The exact values that were fed into the rule's evaluation at this event. For a moving average crossover rule, this would show the current values of both moving averages.
• Evaluation result — Whether the rule evaluated to true or false, and the raw output value if applicable.
• State change indicator — If the rule's state changed as a result of this event, a highlight and arrow icon show the transition (for example, "waiting → triggered").

Click on any rule in the panel to expand it and see additional detail, including the rule's full configuration, its evaluation history for the last several events, and a mini-chart showing how the rule's input values have changed over time.

Chart Synchronisation

The price chart in the replay interface stays synchronised with the current event. As you step through events, the chart automatically scrolls to keep the current price in view. Several overlays are added to the chart during replay:

• Current event marker — A vertical line on the chart showing exactly where the current event falls in the price timeline.
• Trade markers — Entry and exit points are marked directly on the chart with arrows and price labels.
• Indicator overlays — If your strategy uses technical indicators, their values are drawn on the chart and update as you step through events.
• Rule evaluation zones — Shaded regions on the chart show periods where specific rules were active or triggered, giving you a visual sense of how long conditions persisted.

Debugging Unexpected Behaviour

Event-level replay is most valuable when your strategy does something you did not expect. Here are some common debugging scenarios and how to approach them with the replay tool:

Why Did My Strategy Miss a Trade?

If you expected a trade to be taken at a specific point but it was not, navigate to that time in the replay and examine the rule state panel. Look for:

• A filter rule that was blocking entry — its state will show as "triggered" (meaning the filter condition was active and preventing the trade).
• An entry rule that did not trigger — expand the rule to see its input values and understand why the condition was not met.
• A risk management rule that vetoed the entry — check whether position sizing, maximum drawdown, or exposure limits prevented the order.

Why Did My Strategy Enter Here?

If a trade was taken at a point where you did not expect one, step backward from the entry event and watch the rule states leading up to it. Identify which combination of rules all reached a triggered state simultaneously to produce the entry signal. Often the issue is a rule configuration that is slightly too permissive, or an indicator calculation that behaves differently than expected near certain price patterns.

Why Did My Strategy Exit Too Early?

Navigate to the exit event and examine which exit rule triggered. Expand the rule to see its input values at the moment of exit. Common causes include stop-loss levels that are too tight for the instrument's volatility, or trailing stop rules that lock in profits too aggressively during normal price fluctuations.

Comparing Similar Setups

Sometimes a strategy takes a trade in one situation but not in an apparently similar one. Use event replay to navigate to both points in the timeline and compare the rule state panels side by side. Note the exact input values for each rule — small differences in indicator values, time-of-day, or preceding price action often explain why two similar-looking setups produce different outcomes.

Keyboard Shortcuts

For faster navigation, event replay supports the following keyboard shortcuts:

• Space — Play / Pause
• Right Arrow — Step forward one event
• Left Arrow — Step backward one event
• Shift + Right Arrow — Jump forward to the next trade event
• Shift + Left Arrow — Jump backward to the previous trade event
• Home — Jump to the first event
• End — Jump to the last event
• + / - — Increase or decrease playback speed

Best Practices

To get the most out of event-level replay:

• Start with the summary. Review your backtest summary and performance metrics first to identify which trades or periods are worth investigating in detail. Then use event replay to drill into those specific moments.
• Use filters aggressively. A backtest over several months can contain millions of events. Use event filters to focus on the event types that are relevant to your investigation.
• Pin the rules you care about. If you are debugging a specific entry condition, pin those rules to the top of the state panel so you can watch their values change as you step through events.
• Compare winning and losing trades. Step through a representative winning trade and a losing trade back to back. Understanding the differences in rule states and market conditions at entry can reveal important insights about your strategy's edge.
• Check boundary conditions. Pay special attention to events near market open, market close, and around major data releases. These are often the points where strategy behaviour diverges from expectations due to wider spreads, lower liquidity, or rapid price movement.