Automated Backtesting tests your strategy for you. You describe your rules in plain English, and TradeZella's engine runs them across historical data — and shows you every trade it took, so you can verify each one against your strategy.
Video Walkthrough:
Check out our video walkthrough of Automated Backtesting here:
🔗 https://www.loom.com/share/4d5be575b2124af6ac62bea0477aca18
Open Automated Backtesting
Log into TradeZella, click Backtesting in the left sidebar, then click Automated Backtesting.
Describe your strategy or pick a template
There are two ways to start:
Describe your own strategy from scratch — write your strategy in your own words: your setup, entry rules, exits, and risk.
Pick a pre-filled template — choose a ready-made strategy (for example, Asia Range Manipulation + CHoCH on MNQ). Templates fill in the strategy description, symbol, session, period, and risk settings for you. You can edit everything after.
Set your backtest controls
Along with your strategy description, you can set:
Symbol — what you want to backtest
Session — New York, London, Asia, the entire day, or a custom session
Period — the date range to backtest
Trading Days — which days of the week the engine can take trades
Risk — position sizing type (fixed number of contracts, risk percentage of balance, or risk dollar amount), your position sizing value, and a limit on trades per day
Stop Loss — fixed points or fixed percentage (options depend on your symbol)
Profit Taking — fixed points, fixed percentage, or an R multiple
Additional Exit Controls — close all trades at the end of the day, or at the end of your selected session
If a setting conflicts with your written strategy, the setting wins.
Review your setup
Click Continue and TradeZella builds the full setup from your description. Review each section before running — everything is editable:
Strategy Logic — your strategy written out as rules
Entries — your long and short entry conditions
Exits — stop loss anchor, take profit anchor, stop loss type, offsets, day/time exits, and max hold time
Trade Controls — trading days, max trades per day, and session timings
Plus Swing Emphasis (how strict the engine is about structure), Indicators, and Position Sizing
Run the backtest and review your trades
Run the backtest to see your results. Along with your performance stats, you get the full list of trades the engine took. Open any trade to see it on the chart and fact-check it against your rules — so you know exactly how your results were made, not just a final number.
Tips for describing your strategy
The more specific your description, the better your results. A good strategy description includes your symbol, timeframe, session, entry rules, stop placement, target, and risk per trade.
The engine understands common price action and ICT concepts, including: break of structure (BOS), change of character (CHoCH), fair value gaps (FVG and iFVG), order blocks, breaker blocks, mitigation blocks, liquidity sweeps, equal highs/lows, market structure (HH/HL/LH/LL), premium and discount zones, and optimal trade entry (OTE). You can also combine higher-timeframe bias with lower-timeframe entries.
Example strategy description:
"Backtest MNQ futures over the last 6 months, 5-minute candles, 9:30 AM to 12:00 PM EST. In a clear uptrend, wait for price to retrace into the OTE zone and buy when price taps it. Mirror for downtrends. Stop below the leg low (for longs) or above the leg high (for shorts). Target 2R. Risk 1% per trade."
Things to know
Minimum position size is 1 contract. Position size is calculated from your risk and stop size and rounded down — but never below 1 contract. If you're testing a small account with a wide stop, a single trade can risk more than the percentage you set.
Session exits. If you set a trading session, all trades close at the end of that session unless your strategy says to hold them until the stop or target is reached.
Indicators. You can describe general conditions in your strategy, but you can't add custom indicators that TradeZella doesn't support.
Plan limits. Automated Backtesting is available on the Pro and Ultra plans. Pro includes 10 automated backtest runs, and Ultra includes 100.
Zella AI credits. Automated backtest runs do not use your Zella AI credits — they're counted separately. Even if you've used all your credits, you can still run automated backtests until you reach your plan's run limit.
If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to reach out to our support team — we're here to help!