EA Backtest Reports

Net profit is the total gain after all costs. Profit factor is the ratio of gross profit to gross loss — a value above 1.0 means the strategy made money overall. A well-designed EA should target a profit factor above 1.5. Anything below 1.2 is marginal. Anything above 3.0 may indicate over-fitting.

The largest peak-to-trough decline in equity during the test period, expressed as a percentage. Lower is safer. Prop firms typically require this to stay below 10%. An EA with a 25% historical max drawdown will almost certainly violate a prop firm's 10% limit — even if the overall results look impressive.

The number of completed trades in the test. Statistical significance improves with sample size. A backtest with fewer than 200 trades over several years is too small to draw confident conclusions. More trades across different market conditions give a truer picture of expected performance.

The average dollar profit (or loss) per trade, calculated as net profit divided by total trades. A positive expected payoff is required for long-term viability. This number also helps you project expected monthly returns at a given trade frequency.

Net profit divided by the maximum drawdown — expressed as a number. A recovery factor above 3 indicates a robust strategy that generates meaningful returns relative to its worst drawdown period. Below 1 means the strategy does not recover from its deepest losing streak within the test window.