FX Strategy Lab Backtester and Replay Trainer

Bar replay and a simple rule-based backtester in one MT5 tool: practice your manual trading bar by bar on a normal chart, then test a rule built from the same built-in conditions on the history available in your terminal.

Example: "uptrend + MACD golden cross + RSI crossing above 50" - tick the boxes, run it, and get win rate, profit factor, expectancy and closed-balance drawdown.

Replay alone shows how you trade, but checking a rule across years of history by hand takes a long time. Replay + automatic verification (this tool): practice bar by bar, then test the rule on past data using built-in conditions.

TRY IT FIRST: The free demo lets you run Method Verification in the Strategy Tester right away. Want to try the bar-by-bar replay too? The 1-month rental gives you every feature on your own charts for a month. (Replay, the trade journal, statistics and weakness analysis need a normal chart, so they are not in the demo.)

Most traders backtest a method that looks perfect on a finished chart, then watch it fall apart the moment they trade it live. The problem is rarely the strategy - it is that reading a chart AFTER the fact is a completely different skill from reading it bar by bar, in real time, without knowing what happens next.

FX Strategy Lab is a training and verification tool that rebuilds that real-time experience inside MT5, then automatically measures results such as win rate, profit factor, expectancy and closed-balance drawdown, broken down by trend, session, volatility, and more.

Most backtesting tools stop at a single equity curve. Most trade journals only track statistics on trades you have already placed. FX Strategy Lab combines both in one EA: you practice execution bar by bar, then automatically verify any combination of the same conditions over the date range you set (up to the history available in your terminal). Manual replay and automated verification offer the same risk-management settings (TP/SL, breakeven, trailing stop, split TP); trading costs and fill prices are handled differently (see Simulation limits below).

HOW IT WORKS

1. Attach the EA to a chart, pick a symbol, timeframe, and date range.

2. Step through that history bar by bar (or jump to any date) and trade it live-style with Buy/Sell, your own SL/TP/lots, and an entry-reason tag.

3. Review the journal, statistics, condition filters, and weakness analysis on what you just traded.

4. Or skip the manual practice and run Method Verification: pick any combination of built-in conditions, set TP/SL/lots, and get closed positions, win rate (wins / losses / breakevens), profit factor, expectancy, realized P/L and closed-balance drawdown over the date range set in inputs 004/005 - logged to CSV so you can compare runs.

REPLAY THE MARKET, BAR BY BAR

Step through any historical period one candle at a time (or jump straight to a date), and step back one candle at a time whenever you want to look again. Back also works while a position is open: the position returns to the state it had at that candle (SL, remaining lots, split-TP progress). Place buy/sell orders with your own SL, TP, and lot size, exactly as you would live, with no hindsight.

TAG EVERY ENTRY WITH YOUR OWN REASONING

Attach entry-reason tags (trend, pullback, breakout, support/resistance, pattern, indicator signal, and more) to every trade, and add a free-text comment. Every entry, exit, and reason is saved to a searchable trade journal.

SEE YOUR WEAKNESSES IN NUMBERS, NOT GUESSES

Filter your full trade history by trend direction, trading session, Bollinger Band state, ATR volatility state, and more, and let the built-in weakness analysis list "weakness candidates" - conditions such as weekday, session or trend where your win rate is notably below your overall win rate - and "strength candidates" where it is above. Weakness and strength candidates are extracted by a rule-based check against the minimum trade count and win-rate gap set in the inputs. They do not guarantee statistical significance.

AUTOMATICALLY TEST YOUR RULES ON PAST DATA

Select from a large library of built-in detectors - moving averages, MACD, RSI, Bollinger Bands, Stochastic, Ichimoku, market structure (BOS/CHoCH), support/resistance breakouts, candlestick patterns, and divergence (regular and hidden) across multiple indicators - combine any of them with AND logic (buy and sell are judged separately; S/R Proximity and ATR conditions only filter), set your TP/SL/lot rules, and run an automated backtest over the date range you set (inputs 004/005; up to the history available in your terminal). Every run is logged to CSV so you can compare methods side by side over time.

BUILT-IN ANALYSIS LIBRARY

- Trend detection: choice of moving-average method (SMA or EMA, color-coded fast/slow) or swing-structure method, with a multi-timeframe trend summary

- MACD: golden/dead cross, zero-line cross, regular and hidden divergence

- RSI: overbought/oversold, 50-line cross, regular and hidden divergence

- Stochastic: overbought/oversold, 50-line cross, %K/%D golden/dead cross, regular and hidden divergence

- Bollinger Bands, three bands at once (1-sigma / 2-sigma / 3-sigma, individually color-coded): band touches, squeeze detection, band walk, mid-line bounce and break

- Ichimoku Kinko Hyo: Tenkan-sen/Kijun-sen cross, cloud (Kumo) breakout, cloud twist, Chikou Span cross

- Support/resistance: swing-cluster S/R levels, confirmed-close breakout signals, previous-day pivot points, previous day/week high-low, previous month high-low, round-number levels, Asian session range

- Market structure breaks: Break of Structure (BOS) and Change of Character (CHoCH), both bullish and bearish

- ATR volatility state (high / low / rising / falling), shown live on the panel, with optional ATR-multiple-based SL/TP sizing

- Candlestick pattern recognition (multiple classic reversal/continuation patterns detected automatically)

RISK MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Fixed pips, RR-ratio-based TP, or ATR-multiple-based SL/TP; a recent swing high/low as your SL reference; move to breakeven once price reaches your trigger; trailing stop; split TP1/TP2/TP3 with automatic partial close - all available both in live replay trading and inside the automated method verification.

TRADE JOURNAL & STATISTICS

- Full trade journal with entry/exit price, P/L in money and pips, R-multiple, and your own entry-reason tags and comments

- Overall statistics: win rate, profit factor, expectancy(R), max win/loss, win/loss streaks, closed-balance drawdown - broken down by trend state and trading session

- Stats by condition: filter your history by trend, session, Bollinger state, and ATR state (multi-select) to see performance under any specific combination

- Weakness analysis: lists weakness and strength candidates (e.g. weekday, session, trend) from your own replay trade history. Weakness and strength candidates are extracted by a rule-based check against the minimum trade count and win-rate gap set in the inputs. They do not guarantee statistical significance.

- Equity curve chart

- Save and load replay sessions (closed trades and the bar you stopped at) to pick up a run later. An open position is not saved, so close it before saving

- Export trade history and method-verification results to CSV

CONFIGURABLE SETUP ALERTS

Get a popup and sound alert the moment a setup forms - choose the trigger (pattern, divergence, MACD/MACD-zero cross, RSI/Stochastic level or cross, Bollinger signal, S/R breakout, structure break, Ichimoku signal, and more) and optionally filter it to only fire during an uptrend/downtrend or near support/resistance.

WORKS ON ANY SYMBOL AND TIMEFRAME your broker provides history for. All analysis runs on the historical data already available in your terminal - no external data feed required.

A note on backtesting: the figures produced by replay and Method Verification are historical simulation results, not a promise of future performance. Method Verification is a simplified simulation for mechanically comparing trading rules on price data. Spread can be included as a fixed approximation for the whole period (not historical spread); commission, swap and slippage are not included. It does not reproduce real execution conditions or live trading results.

SIMULATION LIMITS

- Method Verification: spread is a fixed approximation entered in the dialog; commission, swap and slippage are not included. If the spread field is empty (for example, at the weekend when the latest quote is old), enter a value to run it (0 = no spread).

- Realized P/L and closed-balance DD use all realized exit legs (including partial closes of a position still open); floating P/L is not included.

- Fixed lot size; margin and stop-out are not modeled.

- Money values use the tick value obtained when the verification is run, applied to the whole test period.

- The order of high and low inside a bar is unknown, so an SL moved by breakeven/trailing is applied from the next bar (bar-level approximation). If SL and TP are both reached in the same bar, SL is assumed first. Only one position is held at a time.

- With split TP, win rate, profit factor and expectancy are calculated per position; positions still open at the end are excluded from them.

- Method Verification splits results into wins, losses and breakevens (P/L close to zero); breakevens are included in the win-rate denominator.

- Replay statistics (Stats, Stats by Condition, Weakness Analysis) count a trade closed at exactly zero P/L as a loss.

- Replay: the fixed spread set on the panel is applied to manual entries and manual exits, but not fully to automatic SL/TP closes.

- Replay does not include commission, swap or slippage, and it is not a full execution simulation.

SCREENSHOTS

1. Replay panel and the condition list in one tool

2. Bar-by-bar replay with your own SL/TP

3. Weakness and strength candidates from practice trades

4. Control panel: buy/sell/close, SL/TP, spread, stats, weakness analysis

5. Hover a signal to see when it was confirmed

6. Each verification run is logged to CSV

7-9. Verification results on sample data. These rules lost money (profit factor below 1). That is the point: the tool shows you when a rule did not hold up on past data, before you risk real money on it.

All screenshots use sample synthetic price data for feature demonstration (not a real market).

Use this tool to build discipline and evaluate ideas, not as a guarantee of profit.