Your first Backtest session

By the end of this guide you will have replayed a past trading day bar by bar and placed your first practice trade, with its Journal columns ready to fill in.

Backtest replays past price history. Its orders are simulated and never reach your MT5.

Before you start

• Sign in to PipLoop. The practice Journal is saved with your account and needs a connected MT5 account (Connect an MT5 account). Without one you can still practise, but the Journal columns are not saved.

1. Open Backtest and choose a symbol

1. Open Backtest in the sidebar. Until the session is ready, the trade panel shows Loading backtest session….
2. The default layout has three charts: a large 1m entry chart and two higher-timeframe charts (1h and 4h). To change the arrangement, open Multitimeframe layout in the toolbar and pick 1 chart, 2 charts or 3 charts.
3. Pick the symbol in the instrument menu at the top left of the entry chart. The other charts follow it. Each chart has its own timeframe menu.

2. Pick a day, or let PipLoop pick one

1. Click the date range button in the toolbar (Edit backtest date range). The Date Range box has From and To fields and a calendar. Only days with history can be picked. Click Apply.
2. To practise without knowing what comes next, click the cube button beside it (Random date range). It moves the From date to a random trading day on or before your To date. The same choice sits in the box as Random.

3. Replay bar by bar

1. Click ▶ Start in the toolbar. The replay controls appear on the entry chart.
2. Use Play and Pause, or move one bar at a time with Step forward 1 bar and Step back 1 bar. The clock shows the time elapsed in the session.
3. Change Playback speed from 0.5x up to 32x.
4. The higher-timeframe charts follow the same replay time as the entry chart.
5. Click ■ Stop to hide the replay controls.

4. Draw once, see it on every timeframe

The drawing tools sit in the rail on the left of the charts. The last button in the rail is drawing sync. It is off by default, so each chart keeps its own drawings. Turn it on and the tooltip reads Drawing sync ON — charts with the same symbol share drawings: a level or trend line drawn on 1h now shows on 1m and 4h too.

5. Place a practice order

In the trade panel on the right:

1. Choose how to size the trade: RISK (enter Risk ($)) or LOT (enter Lot).
2. Enter SL (points) and TP (points). The panel shows 1 Pip Value, Risk / Reward and Est. Margin.
3. Click BUY.M (Market Buy) or SELL.M (Market Sell) to fill at once with that SL and TP. Or click BUY.P (Buy Pending) or SELL.P (Sell Pending), place the entry, SL and TP lines on the chart, then click Confirm (or Cancel).
4. Keep the replay running. The dock under the charts shows your trade in Positions or Pending, and closed trades in History. The dock footer, marked Backtest / Simulated, shows Balance, Equity and Floating P/L.

Results from a Backtest session are simulated practice on past data. They do not reflect actual trading and do not guarantee future results.

6. Journal your practice trades

Every row in the dock has Playbook, Setup, Note and Screenshot columns, as in Chart Workspace. Fill them in as described in Use a Playbook template on a trade. Closed trades keep them in History.

To read your practice results, open Journal › Analytics and set Source to Backtest (All Backtest sessions). See Read your Journal analytics.

If something goes wrong

• The date range or symbol cannot be changed. Replay is on. Click ■ Stop first; the instrument menu shows Symbol locked during replay until then.
• My open trade disappeared after stepping back. Step back 1 bar rewinds the session, and open positions and pending orders end at that point. Use it to study a bar, not to undo a trade.
• The Journal columns say “Sign in to save your Journal.” Sign in to PipLoop, then open Backtest again.
• The Random button is greyed out. The symbol has no history loaded yet, or replay is on.