When your automated backtest finishes, it opens on the Overview tab of the Session results page — your performance summary at a glance.
To open your results, go to Backtesting → Sessions tab, click the three-dot menu (⋮) on an automated backtesting session, and choose Session results.
What's on the Overview tab?
The Overview tab pulls together everything about how your automated backtest performed:
Top-line stats (win rate, profit factor, net P&L, and more)
The Equity Curve and Monthly P&L charts
Risk & Return metrics
A Direction Breakdown for long vs. short trades
Your Strategy & parsed rules
The Zella AI Analysis
You can switch to the Trade Log tab to see every individual trade, or open View Setup to rerun or edit the backtest.
What do the top stats mean?
The cards at the top summarize the whole backtest:
Win Rate — the percentage of trades that were profitable.
Profit Factor — gross profit divided by gross loss. Anything above 1.0 is profitable. A profit factor of 3.42 means the strategy earned $3.42 for every $1.00 it lost.
Net P&L — total profit or loss across every backtested trade.
Total Trades — how many trades the engine took, with the average number of trades per day shown underneath.
Avg Win / Loss — the average size of a winning trade next to the average size of a losing trade.
What do the Equity Curve and Monthly P&L charts show?
The Equity Curve plots your running account balance across the whole backtest period. A steady upward slope means the strategy grew the account over time; dips show drawdowns along the way.
The Monthly P&L chart groups profit and loss by month. Green bars are profitable months and red bars are losing months, so you can quickly spot streaks or seasonal patterns.
What do the Risk & Return metrics mean?
The Risk & Return section shows how much return the strategy produced for the risk it took. Hover over the ⓘ icon next to any metric to see its definition in TradeZella.
Sharpe Ratio — annualized return per unit of total volatility, penalizing upside and downside swings equally. As a rule of thumb: above 1 is decent, above 2 is strong, and above 3 is excellent.
Max Drawdown — the largest peak-to-trough loss during the backtest, shown in dollars and as a percentage of your starting balance. Think of it as your pain threshold — would you have stuck with the strategy through that drop?
Calmar Ratio — annualized return divided by the worst drawdown. Above 1 means you'd recover your worst drawdown in a year of average returns, and pros typically target above 3.
Sortino Ratio — like Sharpe, but it only penalizes downside volatility. A number higher than your Sharpe is a good sign — it means your big swings are to the upside, not the downside.
💡 Pro Tip: Look at these together, not in isolation. A high win rate with a poor profit factor, or strong returns with a deep max drawdown, tells you more than any single number on its own.
What is the Direction Breakdown?
The Direction Breakdown splits your results into Long Trades and Short Trades, each with its own count and win rate.
This helps you see whether your edge comes mostly from one side of the market — for example, if longs win more often than shorts, or if you're taking far more of one than the other.
What is the Strategy & parsed rules section?
Strategy & parsed rules is a read-only view of how TradeZella interpreted your written strategy.
It shows your Original Description, the Parsed Parameters (instrument, period, session, timeframe, account balance, and indicators), and the full list of Trading Rules the engine used — your entries, exits, stop loss, take profit, position sizing, and trading days.
Use this to confirm the engine understood your strategy the way you intended. To change any of it and rerun, open View Setup.
Related help article: How to Rerun, Modify, or Save Your Automated Backtesting Session as a Template in TradeZella
What is the Zella AI Analysis?
The Zella AI Analysis is an AI-generated read of your automated backtesting results. It typically covers:
Edge Assessment — whether the strategy shows a real, structural edge
Direction Comparison — how your long and short performance stack up
Temporal Patterns — consistency over time, losing streaks, and seasonality
Risk Assessment — how the drawdown and worst trades look
One Actionable Suggestion — a single concrete idea to test next
Treat it as a starting point for your own review, not a verdict — always fact-check the trades against your rules.
That's the whole Overview tab! Now you can read your results at a glance and know exactly where your edge is coming from.
If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to reach out to our support team — we're here to help!