Rule State Visualisation

Rule state visualisation gives you a clear, colour-coded view of every rule in your strategy at any moment during a backtest. By mapping each rule to a visual state — active, triggered, waiting, or disabled — you can instantly understand why your strategy made the decisions it did, and more importantly, why it did not take trades you might have expected.

Understanding Rule States

Every rule in your strategy exists in one of four states at any given point during a backtest. These states determine whether the rule is contributing to trade decisions, waiting for a condition to be met, or temporarily inactive.

Active

A rule in the active state is currently being evaluated on every incoming event. It has all the data it needs to perform its calculation, and its condition is being checked continuously. An active rule has not yet been triggered — its condition has not been satisfied. For example, a moving average crossover entry rule is active while the fast moving average is below the slow moving average. It is being evaluated on every tick, but the crossover has not occurred yet.

Triggered

A rule enters the triggered state when its condition has been satisfied. For entry rules, this means the entry signal is present. For exit rules, this means the exit condition has been met. For filter rules, triggered means the filter is currently blocking or allowing trades depending on the filter's configuration. A triggered rule is the signal that the strategy engine uses to make trade decisions — when all required rules in a group reach the triggered state simultaneously, a trade action is taken.

Waiting

A rule is in the waiting state when it cannot yet be evaluated because it is missing required data. This most commonly occurs at the start of a backtest when indicators need a warm-up period to accumulate enough historical data for their calculations. For example, a 200-period moving average rule will remain in the waiting state for the first 200 bars of data. Once enough data has been processed, the rule automatically transitions to the active state.

Disabled

A disabled rule has been explicitly deactivated, either by user configuration or by the strategy engine based on other conditions. Disabled rules are not evaluated and do not participate in trade decisions. A rule might be disabled if it only applies during certain market hours, or if it is part of a conditional rule group that is not currently relevant.

Colour Coding and Visual Indicators

Arconomy uses a consistent colour scheme across all trade analysis tools to represent rule states. Once you learn these colours, you can scan the state of your entire strategy at a glance.

State Colours

• Green — Triggered. The rule's condition is currently satisfied. This is the colour you look for when confirming that a signal is present.
• Blue — Active. The rule is being evaluated but its condition is not yet met. This is the neutral, working state.
• Amber / Yellow — Waiting. The rule is not yet ready to be evaluated, usually due to insufficient data for indicator warm-up.
• Grey — Disabled. The rule is not participating in the current evaluation cycle.

Transition Indicators

When a rule changes state, the visualisation provides additional visual cues to draw your attention:

• Pulse animation — A brief pulse effect on the rule card when a state change occurs during event replay. This makes it easy to spot changes as you step through events.
• Transition arrow — A small arrow icon appears next to the state label showing the direction of the transition (for example, "Active → Triggered").
• Border highlight — The rule card's left border changes colour to match the new state, with a brief glow effect to draw attention.
• History dot trail — Below each rule card, a row of small coloured dots shows the rule's state over the last several events, giving you a quick sense of how frequently the rule is changing state.

Additional Visual Indicators

Beyond state colours, each rule card displays several other pieces of visual information:

• Rule type icon — A small icon indicating whether the rule is an entry, exit, filter, or risk management rule. Entry rules use an upward arrow, exit rules use a downward arrow, filters use a funnel icon, and risk rules use a shield icon.
• Evaluation counter — A small badge showing how many times the rule has been evaluated in the current backtest. This helps you gauge how active the rule has been.
• Trigger count — The number of times the rule has entered the triggered state during the backtest. Comparing this count across rules can reveal which rules are the most and least selective.
• Connection lines — When viewing the strategy on the canvas during replay, lines between connected rules are coloured to show the flow of signals through the strategy.

Canvas Overlay View

In addition to the rule state panel, you can view rule states directly on the strategy canvas. When you open the canvas overlay during a backtest replay, each rule node on the canvas is colour-coded to match its current state. This gives you a birds-eye view of your entire strategy's state at any moment in time.

The canvas overlay is especially useful for strategies with many rules, where the list view in the rule state panel can become long. On the canvas, you can see spatial relationships between rules and quickly identify which groups of rules are triggered versus which are still waiting or active.

Connection lines between rules on the canvas also change colour to indicate signal flow. When an upstream rule is triggered and passing its signal to a downstream rule, the connection line turns green. When the upstream rule is not triggered, the connection line remains grey, showing that the signal path is not active.

Understanding Why Trades Were or Were Not Taken

The most common use of rule state visualisation is understanding the specific combination of conditions that led to a trade being taken — or not taken. Here is how to approach each scenario.

Why a Trade Was Taken

Navigate to the moment just before a trade entry in the event replay and observe the rule state panel. For a trade to be taken, the following conditions must all be true simultaneously:

1. All required entry rules in the active entry group must be in the triggered state (green).
2. All filter rules must be in a state that permits entry — depending on the filter type, this means either triggered (for inclusion filters) or active/not-triggered (for exclusion filters).
3. All risk management rules must permit the trade — position sizing rules must calculate a valid lot size, and exposure limits must not be exceeded.
4. No exit rule must be simultaneously triggered that would immediately close the position.

If all these conditions are met at the same event, the strategy engine generates an entry order. The rule state panel will show all contributing rules in green at that moment.

Why a Trade Was Not Taken

If you expected a trade at a certain point but one was not taken, the rule state visualisation will show you exactly which rule prevented it. Look for:

• An entry rule still in blue (active) — The entry condition was close but not quite met. Expand the rule to see how far its input values were from the trigger threshold.
• A filter rule in green (triggered) when it should not be — An exclusion filter was active, blocking the entry signal even though entry rules were ready.
• A risk rule in grey (disabled) or blocking — A risk management constraint prevented the trade. This might be a maximum position count limit, a daily loss limit, or an exposure cap.
• A rule in amber (waiting) — One or more rules did not have enough data to evaluate. This typically only happens near the start of a backtest.

State Timeline View

The state timeline is a horizontal visualisation that shows the state of every rule across the entire backtest duration. Each rule is represented as a horizontal bar, and the bar is coloured according to the rule's state at each point in time. This gives you a complete picture of how your strategy's rules behaved across the full backtest period.

The state timeline is useful for identifying patterns such as:

• Long periods of inactivity — If your entry rule stays blue (active) for extended periods without triggering, your entry conditions may be too restrictive.
• Frequent rapid toggling — If a rule rapidly alternates between active and triggered, the underlying condition may be noisy and could benefit from smoothing or a confirmation period.
• Filter dominance — If a filter rule is triggered (blocking) for the majority of the backtest, it may be overly restrictive and preventing your strategy from finding enough opportunities.
• Warm-up duration — The amber region at the start of each rule's bar shows you exactly how long each rule needs before it begins contributing to trade decisions.

Exporting State Data

You can export rule state data for external analysis. Click the Export button in the rule state panel header and choose from:

• State snapshot (CSV) — Exports the state of every rule at the currently selected event, including all input values and evaluation results.
• Full state history (CSV) — Exports the complete state transition history for all rules across the entire backtest. Each row represents a state change event.
• State timeline image (PNG) — Exports the state timeline visualisation as a high-resolution image for use in reports or presentations.