Trade Timeline

The trade timeline gives you a chronological view of every trade your strategy executed during a backtest. Each trade is displayed as a card with its key details — entry and exit prices, profit or loss, duration, and the rules that triggered the trade — letting you quickly scan through your strategy's activity and identify patterns, outliers, and areas for improvement.

Trade Timeline Overview

The trade timeline is accessible from the Trade Timeline tab in any completed backtest's results view. When you open the timeline, you see a scrollable list of trade cards arranged in chronological order from the first trade to the last. Each card provides a summary of a single completed trade.

Above the trade list, a visual timeline bar spans the full backtest period. Trades are represented as coloured segments on this bar — green for profitable trades and red for losing trades. The height or thickness of each segment corresponds to the trade's magnitude of profit or loss, giving you an instant visual summary of when your strategy was most active and most successful.

Key summary statistics are displayed at the top of the timeline view:

• Total trades — The total number of completed trades in the backtest.
• Win rate — The percentage of trades that closed with a positive return.
• Average P&L — The mean profit or loss per trade, in both currency and percentage terms.
• Average duration — The mean holding period across all trades.
• Best trade / Worst trade — Quick links to the most and least profitable trades in the timeline.

Filtering Trades

When a backtest produces hundreds or thousands of trades, you need effective filters to find the trades that matter. The trade timeline provides several filtering options, accessible from the filter bar above the trade list.

Outcome Filter

Filter trades by their profit or loss outcome:

• All Trades — Show every trade (default).
• Winners Only — Show only trades that closed with a positive P&L.
• Losers Only — Show only trades that closed with a negative P&L.
• Break-Even — Show trades that closed within a configurable threshold of zero P&L (default: +/- 0.1%).

Direction Filter

Filter by trade direction:

• All Directions — Show both long and short trades.
• Long Only — Show only trades that opened with a buy order.
• Short Only — Show only trades that opened with a sell order.

Date Range Filter

Restrict the timeline to trades that occurred within a specific date range. Click the date range selector to choose a start and end date, or use the visual timeline bar to click and drag a selection region. Only trades with entry dates within the selected range will be shown.

Symbol Filter

For multi-symbol strategies, filter trades by the instrument they were executed on. The symbol filter displays a dropdown of all symbols that had at least one trade during the backtest. You can select one or more symbols to focus on.

Duration Filter

Filter trades by their holding period:

• Any Duration — Show all trades regardless of how long they were held.
• Under 1 hour — Very short-term trades.
• 1 hour to 1 day — Intraday trades.
• 1 day to 1 week — Short-term swing trades.
• Over 1 week — Longer-term positions.
• Custom — Define your own minimum and maximum duration.

Sorting Trades

The trade timeline can be sorted by any of the following criteria. Click a column header or use the sort dropdown to change the sort order:

• Entry time (default) — Chronological order, oldest first or newest first.
• Exit time — Sorted by when each trade was closed.
• P&L (currency) — Sorted by absolute profit or loss in the account currency.
• P&L (percentage) — Sorted by the return as a percentage of the entry price.
• Duration — Sorted by how long the trade was held, shortest first or longest first.
• Maximum Adverse Excursion (MAE) — Sorted by the worst drawdown experienced during the trade before it closed.
• Maximum Favourable Excursion (MFE) — Sorted by the best unrealised profit reached during the trade before it closed.

Click the same sort criterion a second time to reverse the sort direction. An arrow indicator on the selected column shows whether the sort is ascending or descending.

Searching Trades

The search bar at the top of the trade timeline lets you find specific trades quickly. You can search by:

• Trade ID — Each trade is assigned a unique identifier. Type the full or partial ID to find a specific trade.
• Symbol — Type a symbol name to find all trades on that instrument.
• Date — Type a date in YYYY-MM-DD format to find trades that were open on that date.
• Rule name — Type the name of a specific rule to find all trades where that rule was involved in the entry or exit decision.

Search results update as you type, with matching text highlighted on the trade cards.

Individual Trade Details

Click on any trade card in the timeline to expand it and view the full details of that trade. The expanded view is divided into several sections.

Entry Details

The entry section shows everything about how the trade was opened:

• Entry time — The exact timestamp when the entry order was filled.
• Entry price — The fill price of the entry order.
• Direction — Whether the trade was a long (buy) or short (sell) position.
• Position size — The number of lots or units traded, as determined by your position sizing rules.
• Spread at entry — The bid-ask spread at the moment of entry, giving you visibility into execution conditions.
• Entry rules triggered — A list of every rule that was in the triggered state at the moment the entry signal was generated. Click any rule name to jump to that rule in the rule state visualisation.

Exit Details

The exit section provides the corresponding information for how the trade was closed:

• Exit time — The exact timestamp when the exit order was filled.
• Exit price — The fill price of the exit order.
• Exit reason — The category of exit: stop-loss, take-profit, trailing stop, exit rule triggered, or end-of-backtest forced close.
• Spread at exit — The bid-ask spread at the moment of exit.
• Exit rules triggered — A list of every rule that contributed to the exit decision.

Profit and Loss Summary

The P&L section breaks down the trade's financial outcome:

• Gross P&L — The raw profit or loss based on price movement alone.
• Commission — The total commission cost for both the entry and exit legs of the trade.
• Swap / Financing — Any overnight holding costs charged during the trade's duration.
• Slippage — The difference between the expected fill price and the actual fill price, if slippage modelling was enabled.
• Net P&L — The final profit or loss after all costs are deducted. This is the number that matters for your account balance.
• Return (%) — The net P&L expressed as a percentage of the entry value.
• R-multiple — The net P&L expressed as a multiple of the initial risk (the distance from entry to the initial stop-loss). An R-multiple greater than 1 means the trade returned more than it risked.

Duration and Timing

• Total duration — How long the position was held, displayed in days, hours, and minutes.
• Time to MAE — How long after entry the trade reached its worst point (maximum adverse excursion). If this is very short, it may indicate poor entry timing.
• Time to MFE — How long after entry the trade reached its best point (maximum favourable excursion). If this is very early and the trade later gave back profits, your exit rules may benefit from tightening.

Rules Triggered

The rules section lists every rule that played a role in the trade, grouped by type:

• Entry rules — The rules whose triggered states combined to generate the entry signal.
• Filter rules — Any filter rules that were evaluated at entry and their state (passed or would have blocked).
• Risk rules — The risk management rules that determined position size and placement of initial stops.
• Exit rules — The specific rule or rules that triggered the exit. If multiple exit rules were triggered simultaneously, all are listed.

Each rule entry includes a link to view that rule at the moment of the trade in the event replay, letting you jump directly into the detailed event-by-event view for further investigation.

Chart Integration

The trade timeline works alongside the main price chart in the backtest results view. When you click on a trade card, the chart automatically scrolls to the trade's entry point and highlights the trade's duration with a shaded region. Entry and exit points are marked with arrows and price labels on the chart.

You can also navigate in the opposite direction — click on a trade marker on the chart to automatically scroll the trade timeline to that trade's card and expand it.

Bulk Analysis

When you have filters active, the summary statistics at the top of the timeline update to reflect only the filtered trades. This lets you quickly compare the performance characteristics of different subsets of trades:

• Compare win rate and average P&L for long trades versus short trades.
• Compare performance across different symbols in a multi-symbol strategy.
• Examine whether trade duration correlates with profitability.
• Check if trades taken during specific date ranges performed better or worse than others.

Exporting Trade Data

You can export the trade timeline data for external analysis. Click the Export button above the trade list and choose from:

• CSV — A comma-separated file with one row per trade and columns for all trade details. This is the most flexible format for spreadsheet analysis.
• PDF Report — A formatted report showing the trade list with summary statistics. Useful for sharing with other traders or keeping records.

When filters are active, the export includes only the filtered trades. To export all trades, clear all filters before exporting.