Step 02 · Analyze

Does the edge survive the cells you did not optimise?

One backtest tells you that a setting worked once, somewhere. Run the same settings across a grid of symbols and periods and the shape of the answer decides the harder question: is this a plateau you can stand on, or one spike surrounded by cliffs?

Your setup

Run the same EA with the same settings across a grid of symbols and periods in MetaTrader 5, then paste one line per cell. Mark the cell you optimised on with a star — that is the one the rest of the grid has to justify.

Your grid

Symbol, period, profit factor, and optionally the number of trades. Separate them with spaces, tabs, semicolons or commas, and start a line with # to leave it out.

Put a star in front of the cell whose settings you optimised. Labels cannot contain spaces, and a cell written twice is left out rather than guessed at.

The grid above is filled in with example numbers so you can see the shape of the input. They are not a measurement of anything — replace them with your own runs.

* EURUSD M15 1.38 312
GBPUSD H1 1.19 150
How to grade it

1.0 is break-even before anything goes wrong, so a cell that barely clears it has no room for a wider spread. Clear this field and nothing is graded.

Below this many trades a profit factor moves by half when a handful of trades change places, so the cell is reported rather than trusted.

Diagnosis

A grid full of numbers is not a verdict. These checks ask whether the passing cells are spread out or huddled in one line, whether the cell you optimised stands above the rest, and whether the cell next to it falls off a cliff.

The grid

Rows and columns keep the order you pasted them in, because that order is what makes two cells neighbours. A star marks the cell you optimised on.

By symbol and by period

The same cells added up the other two ways. This is where «it only works on one timeframe» becomes visible: one line carries every passing cell and the others carry none.

Label Cells Passed Median Worst

How this is calculated

Profit factor is the figure used here because it is the one that survives crossing symbols: gross profit divided by gross loss, with no account currency and no lot size inside it. Net profit cannot be compared across a grid — the same strategy earns different amounts on EURUSD and USDJPY for reasons that have nothing to do with whether it works.

What matters is the shape, not the average. A plateau — cells that all land near each other — means the settings are not leaning on the details of one period. A spike, with the optimised cell on top and its neighbours below the line, means the settings remember one stretch of history rather than describe a market.

This page grades the grid you paste; it cannot check that you ran it honestly. Cells from a single year, cells that overlap the period you optimised on, and cells with a handful of trades all look like evidence here. The grid is only as out-of-sample as the runs behind it.

Nothing is uploaded. Every number on this page is computed in your browser, and the link you copy carries only the values you typed.

Related tools

Nothing is uploaded and no report is read. The grid comes only from the lines you pasted, so it inherits every error in them.