Your first strategy
Follow these steps. We'll explain everything along the way.
Instrument and candles
Pick what you want to test your idea on. NIFTY 50 is a good start: it tracks India's 50 biggest companies, so it moves more calmly than a single stock. A candle is one block of time on the chart; 1 day is easiest because each trade lasts days, not minutes.
Describe your strategy
Write your idea the way you'd explain it to a friend. It doesn't need to be complete: we'll turn it into rules and ask about anything that's missing, explaining each choice.
These are the exact rules the computer follows, checked once per candle. Each rule is written out in plain English underneath, so you can confirm it says what you mean.
Buy when
Sell when
Any sell condition closes the trade. Stop loss and target are checked first on every candle.
What do these words mean?
- SMA (average price)
- The average closing price over the last N candles. Price above its 50-day SMA usually means the stock is in an uptrend.
- EMA (fast average)
- Like SMA, but recent prices count more, so it reacts faster to moves.
- RSI (momentum)
- A score from 0 to 100. Below 30 often means the stock fell too fast (oversold); above 70 means it rose too fast (overbought).
- Crosses above
- True only on the candle where the first line moves from below to above the second. "Is above" is true on every candle where it stays above.
- All match / Any matches
- With "All match", every buy condition must be true at the same time. With "Any matches", one is enough.
Risk and capital
This is the most important step. It decides how much you can lose on one bad trade. Pick a style to start; you can fine-tune the numbers after.
Set stop loss or target to 0 to turn it off. Quantity = risk amount ÷ distance to stop, capped by max capital per trade. F&O rounds down to whole lots.
Backtest
A backtest replays your rules on past prices, as if you had traded them back then. Choose how far back to test: longer periods give more reliable results.
Pick a period and run your first backtest
Each run uses one of your monthly backtests. Results show returns, drawdown, every trade and how it compares with simply buying and holding.
Price and trades
▲ buy ▼ sellEquity vs buy and hold
Drawdown
Fall from the last peakProfit and loss per trade
Monthly returns
Trades
| Entry | Exit | Qty | Buy ₹ | Sell ₹ | P&L ₹ | Return | Reason |
|---|
Paper trading
Paper trading runs your strategy on today's real prices with fake money, so you can see how it behaves before risking anything. It only trades while the market is open (9:15 am to 3:30 pm, Monday to Friday), and each new candle takes as long as the candle size you picked.
No session selected
Start your current strategy to trade it on live NSE prices with fake capital. Orders fire when a candle closes during market hours (9:15 am to 3:30 pm).
Live chart
Paper equity
Account
Fake capitalOrders
Plans
Billed monthly through Razorpay. Cancel any time; your plan stays active until the paid month ends.
StratLab is a research and paper trading tool. It doesn't place real orders or give investment advice, and past backtest results don't predict future returns.
Account
Plan and billing
Experience mode
Guided mode explains each step and hides advanced settings. Expert mode shows every control. Both are free, and you can switch any time.
Connection check
Checks your sign-in, the StratLab server, market data and your account. Run it if something isn't loading.
Trade alerts Pro
Get a message whenever a paper trading session buys or sells. For Telegram, open the StratLab bot and press Start, then paste your chat ID (message @userinfobot to find it).