Evaluating Strategies
The Evaluate tab in the Strategy Lab is where you diagnose a running strategy. It shows what your strategy has been doing, how it’s performing against passive alternatives, and whether anything needs your attention - all using real trade data, not simulation.
You open it from the Lab’s tab row, or by selecting a strategy from the Strategies list.
What You See
Section titled “What You See”Evaluate lays out a strategy in a few elements, top to bottom:
- Header - strategy name, status, active version, and pause/resume/archive actions
- Verdict sentence - a one-paragraph summary of what’s happened
- Trigger parameter strip - a compact one-liner showing the active buy/sell rules: “Buy €10.00 when price drops 5.59% · Sell €10.00 when price rises 4.41% · Every day · Bitvavo”
- Key metrics strip - total value, position, realized P&L, unrealized P&L
- The chart - a dual-panel view of price change vs your thresholds, and price with trade markers
- Three insight cards - Benchmark, Calibration, Position
- Audit trail drawer - collapsed by default; contains trades, holdings, versions, events, and parameters
The idea is simple: everything important is visible without scrolling, and the deeper detail lives inside one collapsible section you only open when you need it.
The Verdict Sentence
Section titled “The Verdict Sentence”Prose, not numbers. A single paragraph that reads something like:
“Patient XDC-EUR Trader has been running for 19 days. You’re at −€4.48 overall, −€3.54 vs buy & hold and −€4.67 vs monthly DCA. No round trips yet.”
It covers the four things you most want to know at a glance:
- How long the strategy has been running
- Overall profit or loss
- How you compare to passive alternatives (buy & hold, monthly DCA)
- How many round trips have closed, and what they realized
For strategies with no round trips yet, the sentence gracefully ends with “No round trips yet.” For strategies with a bootstrapped starting position, the overall figure and the vs-benchmark comparisons start from your initial cash plus what the position was worth on the day the strategy began, not from the average cost you entered. Any gap between the two predates the strategy, so it isn’t counted as the strategy’s gain or loss. If you have withdrawn more than you ever put in, percentages are left out and only the euro amounts are shown.
Trigger Parameter Strip
Section titled “Trigger Parameter Strip”Below the verdict, a single compact line shows the strategy’s active rules at a glance:
Buy €10.00 when price drops 5.59% · Sell €10.00 when price rises 4.41% · Every day · Bitvavo
This tells you immediately what the strategy does - the buy/sell trigger thresholds, the trade amounts, the evaluation frequency, and the exchange. No need to open the parameters section.
When RSI confirmation is configured, the strip gains an RSI segment between the sell trigger and the frequency, showing both thresholds at once:
Buy €25.00 when price drops 2.5% · Sell €25.00 when price rises 2.1% · RSI ≤49 / ≥51 · Every day · Kraken
Key Metrics Strip
Section titled “Key Metrics Strip”Four cards below the trigger strip:
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Total value | Free cash + current value of your position at the latest price |
| Position | How many units of the base asset you currently hold (e.g., “2,415.34 XDC”) |
| Realized P&L | Profit or loss already locked in by completed round trips |
| Unrealized P&L | The distance between the current market price and your average cost, the floor the strategy sells above. It is not a verdict on how the strategy has done; the verdict sentence and Benchmark card answer that. The ? beside the label explains this, and on a strategy that began with coins bought at a higher price it also says how much of the gap was already there on day one |
Realized and Unrealized are color-coded green for positive, terracotta for negative.
The Dual-Panel Chart
Section titled “The Dual-Panel Chart”This is the same chart the Simulate tab uses, but fed with real trade data instead of backtest markers. Two stacked panels:
Top panel - Price change vs thresholds
Section titled “Top panel - Price change vs thresholds”The top panel shows how much the price has moved from one candle to the next, measured as a percentage. Your buy and sell thresholds are drawn as dashed reference lines.
- Teal dashed line (below zero) - your buy threshold (e.g., −5%)
- Amber dashed line (above zero) - your sell threshold (e.g., +3%)
When your strategy has multiple versions with different thresholds, the reference lines step at each version transition - so you can see exactly where v1’s thresholds stopped applying and v2’s took over.
Trade markers on the top panel:
| Marker | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ● Solid teal dot | A buy was executed at this candle |
| ● Solid amber dot | A sell was executed at this candle |
| ● Faded teal/amber dot (smaller, 30% opacity) | A signal fired but was blocked before submission (e.g., not enough cash, cooldown active, below ACB) |
| ◯ Hollow teal/amber ring | An order was submitted but cancelled or rejected at the exchange - didn’t land |
The hollow ring is important: it means the strategy decided to act and sent the order, but the exchange didn’t fill it. The ACB line on the bottom panel stays flat for cancelled orders because no fill occurred.
Bottom panel - Price, ACB, and trade markers
Section titled “Bottom panel - Price, ACB, and trade markers”- Teal line - the asset’s closing price over time
- Grey dashed step line - your Average Cost Base (ACB): the weighted average price at which you bought
- Trade dots - same color scheme as the top panel, placed at the price level where the trade happened
When a buy fills, the ACB step line drops (you bought more at a lower price) or rises (you bought at a higher price). When a sell fills, the ACB line stays flat - you sold some position, but the average cost of what’s left is unchanged.
The Three Insight Cards
Section titled “The Three Insight Cards”Below the chart, three cards summarize what’s going on in plain language.
Benchmark
Section titled “Benchmark”Compares your strategy’s actual performance against two passive alternatives computed from real price history, starting the moment the strategy was created:
- Buy & Hold - what you’d have if you had bought on the same dates you added money and held
- Monthly DCA - what you’d have if you spread the same money across monthly purchases
Each deposit is put to work on its own date, at that day’s price. A withdrawal sells out of the benchmark position on the date you took it out, not from the start. All three lines (your strategy, Buy & Hold, Monthly DCA) end at the same moment, so a paused strategy is compared on the same day as the benchmarks.
The card reads like: ”−€0.44 vs buy & hold, −€0.20 vs monthly DCA. Based on the €20.00 you put in.”
Negative numbers mean the strategy is behind the benchmark; positive means ahead. “The amount you put in” is your net deposits (deposits minus withdrawals), plus any starting position you bootstrapped, counted at its market value on the day the strategy began. The average cost you entered for that position still decides when the strategy may sell, but it is not what the benchmarks start from.
The card shows its comparison even before the first round trip. A strategy whose triggers haven’t fired is holding cash instead of being fully invested, and that difference is worth seeing, so the card notes that no round trips have happened yet and shows the figure anyway. Changed in v0.1.34-beta.
Calibration
Section titled “Calibration”Answers “are my triggers actually firing, and if not, why?”
Example: “Buy line crossed 8× → 2 bought, 2 cancelled at exchange, 4 blocked (not enough cash). Sell line crossed 16× → 0 sold, 16 blocked (11 price below cost basis, 5 no inventory).”
Reading it:
- Crossed N× - how many times the market moved past your threshold during the strategy’s life
- N bought / sold - how many of those crossings resulted in an executed trade
- N cancelled at exchange - signals that fired but the order didn’t land (partial fills and exchange rejections)
- N blocked (reasons) - signals that fired but were stopped before submission
The blocker reasons come straight from your strategy’s decision record. Common reasons:
| Reason | What happened |
|---|---|
| Not enough cash | A buy signal fired but the strategy had no free EUR to spend |
| No inventory | A sell signal fired but the strategy had no position to sell |
| Price below cost basis | A sell signal fired but the current price is below your ACB - Aurono refuses to sell at a loss |
| Cost/fees not cleared | A sell signal fired at a price above your ACB, but not far enough above to cover the round-trip exchange fee |
| Cooldown active | A signal fired inside the cooldown window from the previous trade |
| Minimum position guard | A sell signal fired but would drop your position below your configured minimum |
| RSI not oversold | A buy signal fired but RSI was above your buy ceiling |
| RSI not overbought | A sell signal fired but RSI was below your sell floor |
If you see lots of “not enough cash” blockers, look at the Rebalance tab. If you see lots of “price below cost basis,” your strategy is in an accumulation situation - the price has moved against you since you started buying. Lots of “cost/fees not cleared” means the opposite: the position is marginally profitable, and your sell trigger is firing just short of the fee floor.
Position
Section titled “Position”A snapshot of what you currently hold: “2,415.34 XDC at €0.03 avg cost basis, −€4.48 unrealized.”
This card is the only one that reflects right-now state, not historical performance.
The Danger Zone Warning
Section titled “The Danger Zone Warning”When an active strategy’s free cash covers fewer than two more buys, Evaluate shows a warning banner between the metrics strip and the chart. It counts buys, not a share of your starting capital, so coins a strategy started with are never read as spent cash:
⚠ Cash for one more buy. €15.00 available, your buys are €10.00. The buy signal after that will be skipped unless you add cash.
[ Open Rebalancer ]
Once there isn’t enough for the next buy, the banner reads Not enough cash for the next buy. and says buy signals will be skipped until you add cash. While the cash covers two or more buys, the banner stays away.
The Open Rebalancer button takes you directly to the Lab’s Capital Rebalancer tab, with this strategy shown in the list of strategies that need capital, where you can move cash between strategies. This warning does not appear for sell-only strategies (buy amount €0), because they don’t need free cash to function.
If the warning is showing for your strategy and the Calibration card also mentions “not enough cash” blockers, those are the same problem viewed from two angles - the strategy can see buy signals but can’t act on them.
The Audit Trail Drawer
Section titled “The Audit Trail Drawer”A single collapsed section at the bottom of the page labelled Audit trail. While it is closed, the bar adds a short line about what is inside, for example 42 trades, latest 2 days ago · 18 sells with realized P&L · 3 versions. Click Show details to expand. Inside, six tabs:
| Tab | What’s there |
|---|---|
| Trades | Every trade the strategy has ever attempted - filled, partial, cancelled, rejected - with timestamps, sizes, prices, and per-trade attribution |
| Realized P&L | Realized profit or loss per sell. The tab title shows the total, for example Realized P&L (+€12.40) |
| Holdings | Two charts: free cash over time (with danger band gradient) and asset position over time |
| Versions | Every version of your strategy, newest first, with a diff view showing what changed between versions |
| Events | Human-readable sentences for recent strategy events (evaluations, decisions, trade updates) |
| Parameters | Current parameters as a form, with an “Edit parameters” button that creates a new version |
The Audit drawer is closed by default because most of the time you don’t need it - the verdict and insight cards tell you what’s happening. Open it when you want to dig deeper.
Adjusting Capital
Section titled “Adjusting Capital”Just below the verdict sentence you’ll find Deposit and Withdraw buttons. They open an inline form where you can add or remove cash from this specific strategy. These actions don’t move money to or from the exchange - they just allocate more (or less) of your existing exchange balance to this strategy.
When Nothing Is Wrong
Section titled “When Nothing Is Wrong”A healthy, well-calibrated strategy looks quiet on Evaluate:
- The verdict sentence sounds neutral or positive
- The metrics strip has small numbers that are roughly balanced
- The dual-panel chart shows trade dots that line up with threshold crossings
- The three insight cards show small numbers and short sentences
- No warning banners
- The audit drawer stays closed
This is on purpose. Evaluate is designed to be silent when everything is running as designed, and informative when something needs your attention. If you never see a danger warning and never see high blocker counts in the Calibration card, your strategy is working.
Next Steps
Section titled “Next Steps”- Capital Rebalancer - move cash between strategies when one runs low and another has excess
- Simulating Strategies - test parameter changes before applying them to a live strategy
- Sigma Explained - how sensitivity controls work
- Glossary - definitions for every term used on this page