Manual Backtest Helper is a cTrader plugin that lets you record, score, and analyze your strategies directly on the chart — no spreadsheets, no external tools, no exporting data.
You draw your trades visually, and the plugin instantly calculates your win rate, profit factor, net P&L, max drawdown, expectancy, and more. Everything updates in real time as you add or edit trades.
It is built for:
- Discretionary traders who want to backtest a strategy manually on historical price data
- Developing traders building a track record of their setups before going live
- Strategy reviewers who want to replay past trades and measure edge objectively
- Anyone who wants to answer the question: “Does my strategy actually have an edge?”
Key Features
📊 Two Recording Modes
- Manual Mode — Draw a win or loss as a simple trendline between two price points. Direction (BUY/SELL) is inferred automatically from the line angle
- Sim Mode (⚡) — Click to place a full trade setup with entry, take profit target, and stop loss. The plugin scans forward through candles and auto-resolves the outcome as a win or loss
🎯 Automatic Trade Resolution (Sim Mode)
- Scans candle by candle to determine whether the target or stop loss was hit first
- Flags trades as Ambiguous when both levels are touched on the same candle
- Ambiguous trades can be manually overridden to Win or Loss directly from the inspector
💰 Three Risk Modes
- Fixed Lots — enter a specific lot size directly
- Balance % — enter a percentage of starting balance to risk; lot size is calculated automatically from SL pips
- Monetary Amount — enter a fixed currency amount to risk; lot size is calculated automatically from SL pips
📐 Lot Size Calculation Engine
- Automatically back-calculates the correct lot size from risk amount and SL pips
- Snaps to the symbol’s minimum volume step
- Clamps to the symbol’s minimum and maximum allowed volume
🔢 Configurable Inputs
- Starting Balance — manually typed or synced from the live account with one click
- Spread — manually typed or copied from the live chart symbol with one click
- SL Pips — the stop loss distance used for lot size calculation and Sim trade drawing
- Easy ▲ / ▼ spinner buttons for quick incremental adjustments
📈 Live KPI Tiles
Three always-visible headline metrics that update in real time as trades are added or edited:
- NET P&L — total profit/loss across all trades after commission
- WIN RATE — percentage of trades that were wins
- NET PF — Net Profit Factor
- Balance — Balance after backtesting
📋 Win / Loss Stats Table
Side-by-side breakdown of wins and losses across five columns:
- Total Pips
- Pips % of total pips moved
- Trade Count
- Count % of total trades
- Gross monetary value
🔍 Per-Trade Inspector
Click any trade on the chart to see its full detail:
- Type (e.g. BUY WIN, SELL LOSS, BUY AMBIG)
- Lot size
- Pips gained or lost
- Gross P&L
- Entry and close price
- Open and close timestamp
- Commission
- Net P&L (after commission)
- Balance before the selected trade
- Balance after the selected trade
📑 Trades Summary Section
Chart-level statistics across all recorded trades:
- Total trade count
- Gross P&L
- Total commission
- Net P&L
- Maximum drawdown (currency)
- Maximum drawdown percentage
- Return % on starting balance
- Expectancy (average net monetary return per trade)
🏷️ On-Chart Labels
- Toggle trade labels on or off directly from the Trades Summary header
🗑️ Clear All with Confirmation
- ✖ Clear All button removes all recorded trades
- Requires a ✓ Confirm step before executing, preventing accidental deletion
- ✗ Cancel aborts the action
⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts
- Configurable shortcut keys for Win Line, Loss Line, and Trade drawing actions
- Shortcut labels are displayed directly on the action buttons
💾 Persistent State
- All trades, settings, and UI values are saved automatically
- Fully restored the next time the chart or platform is opened
🎨 Theme-Aware UI
- Panel colours, button states, and status text adapt to the active theme
- Toggled buttons highlight to show active drawing mode
