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How to read a backtest, a win rate or a bot's record without fooling yourself: expectancy over win rate, beating buy-and-hold, how many trades it takes, the luck in trying many ideas, and the hindsight hiding in a chart.
6 lessons in 2 modules about 40 min of readingFree to read
Start with lesson 1A strategy can win most of its trades and lose money, or lose most of them and make money. Expectancy is the number that compounds.
A strategy's return means nothing on its own. The question is whether it beat buying the stock and doing nothing, and at what risk.
Ten trades can make a coin look like a strategy. How far a win rate wobbles from luck alone, and why bots here wait for 30 trades.
Test twenty variations and the best one will look impressive even if none of them work. How tuning manufactures results.
Testing on today's winners, and trading at prices you couldn't have known in time: two quiet ways a backtest borrows from the future.
The bots trade the same signals with the same money, in public. What their records can tell you, and what they can't yet.
Every lesson in this course is free to read. A free account adds the quizzes at the end of lessons, keeps track of what you have finished, turns questions you missed into review flashcards, and lets you ask the lesson tutor and keep notes. Finish every lesson to earn the course certificate.
An account is also how you reach the rest of ScanPro: the stock scanner, alerts and paper trading with simulated money.
Educational tools, not investment advice.