How to Build and Backtest a Strategy

The complete guide on CLEO.one — quick and simple way to build and test your ATS (automatic trading strategy)

You like what CLEO.one offers but it’s all a bit too new? No worries, we will go through what the platform can do, starting with building and backtesting trading strategies with the CLEO.one Builder.

All it takes is typing and some ideas you want to test out! It does not matter if you are an experienced Stock trader or are starting to trade Forex now — CLEO.one will make time and save money for every independent trader.

Where do I go to build trading strategies?

Let’s kick this off, starting from the screen you get after signing up here:

The CLEO.one Builder is yours for the crafting and testing of your ATS!

You will notice that the work space of each Rule is organized in 3 parts:

1. On the left you write the entry and exit rules

2. In the middle you specify the action (if to buy or sell)

3. On the right you specify the asset and quantity.

Creating your very first strategy

Let’s demonstrate this with a very simple strategy, starting with the specification of the entry rule:

As you start typing a drop-down with available commands and actions will appear. You can complete the rule by typing it yourself or clicking on the drop-down. Don’t be concerned about combining new indicators or trying out combinations of rules you are not that familiar with — CLEO.one tracks what can be mixed and matched and provides you only with those combinations to choose from. Once you have it as you please, hit Enter or click somewhere outside of the work-space to confirm it.

Feel free to use Price, Candles and Candlestick patterns in your rules as well. Classic technical indicators like RSI, MACD, Stochastic and EMAs are of course available. Strategy examples can be found here.

How to specify assets, amounts, Stop Loss and Take Profit orders

The next step is choosing the action (buying or selling) and specifying the asset and amount:

At the moment you can choose between Currencies and Stocks. For your convenience the amount can be verbalized as units, amount set as % of balance, % of initial balance or a static portfolio amount.

Take Profit and Stop Loss orders can be set here as well. This can be done in pips, but also as fixed market price of the asset, % of market price of the asset, amount set as % of balance or a static portfolio amount you want to gain or are willing to risk. Depends on how you like to think.

Can I also add closing conditions?

Yes you can. Creating close condition is identical to creating entry conditions:

The flexibility of the parameters offers you a lot of control over your strategy. Unlike conventional strategy builders based on indicators, CLEO.one accommodates human thinking by allowing conversational phrases and anything from candlestick patterns to price changes to be a part of how you describe the strategy.

Each parameter can be further specified — you have the option to modify values of technical indicators or select specific asset or time-frame on which the parameter should function. This flexibility offers you full control over your trading strategy and allows you to create highly complex strategies simply.

How many rules in single trading strategy can I set?

You can set up to 10 rules per single strategy:

Just click the “Add Rule” button, below the last lines you’ve written. If what you are writing is not recognized by the system, it will shade it in red and let you know.

How to edit what I have written?

For simplicity we will stick with one rule in this example:

At the moment we recommend deleting the line you want to edit and re-insert it with the new values. Alternatively hit the pencil that appears when you hover on the line with your cursor — the line you want to edit will appear at the bottom of your strategy. In further versions we will be offering direct editing. If you want to delete everything press “Clear” in the upper right corner.

Let’s backtest!

Once you have your strategy set, you’re on to backtesting in moments:

Name the strategy, choose your timeframe (for testing on intraday timeframes upgrade to Premium) and click on “Build Strategy” to set the period (for testing on more than 1 year upgrade to Premium), leverage you want to utilize, initial balance and portfolio currency. If you also wish to test this strategy in real time on our Trading Simulator, it is currently possible for Forex strategies.

Click on “Run Backtest.” Within seconds you will have a notification in the upper right corner that your results are ready. The specific trades executed in the time period can be found under the graph. We did alright this time…

A few last things to remember:

• We are in Early Release Beta so we have a great offer for early supporters, save €70 on Premium only this month!
• Premium allows you to test on any period, on intraday time-frames and gives you access to the CLEO.one Optimizer.
• The CLEO.one Optimizer allows you to improve strategies within minutes with a single click. We’ve created algorithms based on machine learning that will within minutes find the best version of your system.
• We are in the process of adding more US and international stocks, bonds, stock indices, commodities, ETFs and cryptocurrencies and our CLEO.one Analyzer that will provide you with professional grade statistics.
• CLEO.one is cloud based so it is incredibly fast and can be accessed from anywhere! Your strategies are running all the time and you never have to install or update anything.

CLEO.one is set making independent trading simpler and easier by providing the most powerful and comprehensive trading tools on the web — we would love your feedback so get in touch at support@cleo.one or follow us on:

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube

Try it for yourself! Click here and create your own trading strategy.