Okay, so you’ve set up your history data and completed your backtest using Metatrader Strategy Tester. Now let’s look at the results.
There are four tabs to look through: Report, Graph, Results, and Journal
Report:
This is the meat of the backtest. All the statistics of the backtest are displayed here.
• Bars In Test – Displays the depth of the history on which the modeling was based.
• Ticks Modelled – Displays the size of the modeled sequence. Every record of the sequence represents the bar state (OHLCV) at one or another moment. Different bar states can be modeled depending on the timeframe, modeling method, and presence of history data from smaller timeframes within a bar.
• Modelling Quality – Calculated according to the following formula. This should be 90%. If not, read the article on downloading and setting up history data.
ModellingQuality = ((0.25*(StartGen-StartBar) +
0.5*(StartGenM1-StartGen) +
0.9*(HistoryTotal-StartGenM1)) / (HistoryTotal-StartBar))*100%;
• Gross Profit – The summed up profit for all profitable transactions;
• Gross Loss – The summed up loss for all unprofitable transactions;
• Total Net Profit – The Gross profit minus the Gross loss.
TotalNetProfit = GrossProfit – GrossLoss
• Profit Factor – Profit factor, shows the ratio between gross profit and gross loss. The larger this number is, the better.
ProfitFactor = GrossProfit / GrossLoss
• Expected Payoff – Calculated as follows:
Expected Payoff = (ProfitTrades / TotalTrades) * (GrossProfit / ProfitTrades) –
(LossTrades / TotalTrades) * (GrossLoss / LossTrades)
• Absolute Drawdown – Absolute drawdown is the difference between the initial deposit and the smallest value of balance within testing:
AbsoluteDrawDown = InitialDeposit – MinimalBalance
• Maximal Drawdown – The highest difference between one of local upper extremums of the balance graph and the following lower extremums:
MaximalDrawDown = Max of (Maximal Peak – next Minimal Peak)
The rest of the statistics are pretty self explanatory, so we won’t waste time defining those. For more information on this, visit Metatrader’s website on backtesting
Graph:
This is pretty obvious, it is a graph of the Expert advisor’s trade results. The green lines at the bottom mark the lot sizes.
Results:
This tab displays every order placed with the running total of your account balance.
Journal:
This displays any errors and status messages.
Original article source: The Trade Machine (c)
http://thetrademachine.com/blog/2009/10/02/analyzing-backtest-results-in-metatrader-strategy-tester/