What it is

The simulator (also used from Exit Placement and Regime Analysis reports) lets you explore what-if scenarios on trades you have already closed. It is a counterfactual tool: it does not place orders, does not run your strategy forward, and does not confirm how live trading will work after you change settings.

Think of it as: *“If I had taken the exact same entries I already took, but filtered some out or managed stops and targets differently, how might my stats have looked?”*

What you can do

  • Filter past trades by market conditions at entry (e.g. skip trades that opened during certain sessions or regimes)
  • Replay stop-loss and take-profit distances on past trades using historical price candles
  • Compare baseline vs adjusted metrics: trade count, win rate, total PnL, expectancy, profit factor, drawdown
  • Save simulation results as a backtest and turn them into a policy version on a strategy (see Strategies and policies)
  • Run exit-placement simulations from an Exit Placement report with stop-only, target-only, or both legs

How it works

Step 1 - Choose your cohort

You pick an account, date range (or preset timeframe), and optionally a symbol and trade side (long/short). Tessera loads closed trades only.

How the date window works: a trade is included if its exit date (when it closed) falls inside your range - not its entry date. Example: a trade opened in December but closed in January counts toward January if you filter January. The simulator uses the same exit-date rule as the Trade Log and Statistics, so the trade list and headline numbers you see elsewhere should match the cohort you simulate on. See Timezones and dates for local calendar filters and time zones.

Step 2 - Apply a policy

There are two main kinds of simulation:

Entry filters

  • Remove: remove trades that match your condition tree
  • Keep only: keep only trades that match

Conditions are evaluated using market context at entry - specifically the last available price candle at or before your entry time. Future data is never used.

Important: entry filters change which trades are included in the stats. They do not change the PnL of each trade individually.

Exit replay (stop-loss and take-profit)

For management rules, Tessera walks through historical candles from your entry through your exit (and a short forward window where needed) and estimates what would have happened if your stop or target had been at a different distance from entry.

Currently supported in the product: stop-loss and take-profit distance overrides only - not breakeven moves or trailing stops.

Simulated PnL is scaled proportionally from your actual trade based on how far price moved relative to your original exit - it is not a full re-run of position sizing and fills.

Step 3 - Read the comparison

You get a baseline block (all trades in the cohort) and a filtered or simulated block (after your policy). A delta shows the difference. Coverage tells you how many trades had usable market data at entry.

For parameter and condition details, see Simulator conditions and parameters.

Limitations

The simulator is not a strategy replayer. It does not:

  • Simulate entries or bar-by-bar strategy logic from TradingView or your broker
  • Create trades you never took
  • Model tick-by-tick execution, partial fills, slippage, or spread beyond what is already in your stored trade PnL
  • Predict results after you change live settings (see Understanding when results change)
  • Guarantee that a rule which looks good on past data will work the same way going forward

It is probably wrong as a forecast - by design. It is meant to inform your thinking: highlight leaks, test filters on a fixed history, and compare exit distances - not to certify future performance.

Not authoritative. Use simulator output as one input among many (journaling, forward testing, small size live trials).